“The Economics of Safety Legislation in Underground Coal Mining”, 1977 ():
This study examines the case for government intervention in the safety decisions of workers and firms in the presence of imperfect information about job risk, labor market monopoly, and economies of scale in safety production, and finds the case for government intervention weak. It then proceeds to examine the effects of federal safety legislation in underground coal mining passed by Congress in 1952, 1966 [extension of 1952] and 1969.
Data used are taken from annual reports of state mineral departments, Information Circulars published by the Bureau of Mines, Minerals Yearbooks, Bureau of Labor Statistics Bulletins, and the Center for Research in Securities Prices (CRSP) tape. The data are on the output and price of coal, man-hours spent producing coal, fatal and non-fatal injuries incurred in the production of coal, wages of coal miners, numbers of mines in various labor force size categories, and rates of return on coal mining firms whose stocks were traded on the New York Stock Exchange.
The findings are:
that the 1952 Act had no effect on injuries but did result in a shift of production from the unregulated to the regulated coal mining sector, (2) that the 1966 Act had some salutary effect on injuries but that it resulted in the elimination of many small mines, (3) that the 1969 Act had no effect on fatal injuries, furthered the elimination of small mines, and resulted in a substantially higher cost of producing coal and a substantially higher price of coal, (4) that most of the small mines eliminated by the 1966 Act were predominantly non-union mines, (5) that the role of the United Mine Workers (UMW) and the large unionized mines in lobbying for the 1966 and 1969 legislation can be understood in light of the fact that the legislation eliminated small non-union mines, and (6) that the royalty rate per ton of coal paid by unionized mining firms to the United Mine Workers Welfare and Retirement Fund can best be viewed as a device to help achieve the monopoly output in coal mining.