Nora M.C. Pankratz

Working Papers

Mandatory Climate Adaptation: Evidence from Firms’ Investments in Workplace Safety with Patrick Behrer (World Bank) and Jisung Park (U Penn) (submitted)

Strategies to mitigate the effects of climate change exist, but will firms adopt them? Using large-scale confidential micro-data from worker’s compensation claims, high-frequency weather data, and records of firms’ financial performance, we explore the effects of a mandatory firm adaptation on the adverse consequences of hotter temperature. A workplace heat safety mandate significantly reduces injuries, with no discernible effect on firms’ profits and employment, suggesting that firms may not operate at the Pareto frontier when it comes to investing in adaptation.

Temperature, Workplace Safety, and Labor Market Inequality  with Jisung Park (U Penn), Patrick Behrer (World Bank), and Paul Stainier (U Penn) (submitted)

Using data covering the universe of injury claims from the nation's largest worker's compensation system, we explore the relationship between temperature and workplace safety and its implications for labor market inequality. Hotter temperature increases workplace injuries significantly, causing approximately 20,000 injuries per year. The effects persist in both outdoor and indoor settings and for injury types ostensibly unrelated to temperature consistent with cognitive or cost-related channels. The risks are substantially larger for men versus women; for younger versus older workers; and for workers at the lower end of the income distribution, suggesting that accounting for workplace heat exposure may exacerbate total compensation inequality.