Empirical analysis of the incidence of accidents in the workplace on firms' financial performance

This paper performs an empirical analysis on the incidence of labor accidents on firm financial performance. With data on financial statements and labor accidents of 299 Spanish firms for 6 different years we perform panel data estimations and find a negative influence of accident rate on return on assets, as well as on abnormal return on assets. The incidence of accident rate is not shown up immediately in the profit and loss statements. It is mainly realized in the future. We find a significant negative influence in one year ahead financial performance. This finding suggests that labor accidents are disruptors of business operations, affecting mostly to value-added activities related with long term coordination and planning. Results are robust across different estimations methods and with estimations with different control variables.