This article analyses the effectiveness of occupational health and safety (OHS) management in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). In particular, we (1) provide an overview of the implementation of occupational risk preventive activities in a sample of SMEs; (2) characterize alternative approaches of OHS management systems; (3) assess the effectiveness of the identified OHS systems in occupational safety outcomes; and (4) analyse the factors affecting the adoption of such OHS systems. The study is based on primary data obtained by means of a survey on OHS management in 193 Spanish manufacturing SMEs. The analysis disentangles differences between the OHS activity of small-sized enterprises (SSEs) — those under 50 employees — and medium-sized enterprises (MSEs) — 50—250 employees. We find evidence that the effort and type of OHS management system does significantly affect the injury rate. More specifically, firms that complement traditional technical preventive activities with people and organization-oriented procedures are the most effective in reducing occupational accidents. Such advanced OHS systems are significantly less developed in SSEs. Our results also reveal that the choice of OHS system is determined by the quality of industrial relations, rate of unionization, intensity of price-based competition, access to public aid and training activities provided by the OHS public agencies, technology intensity, and the manual nature of workers’ tasks.

Economic regulation of firms with market power has placed increasing emphasis on incentive-based regulation such as price caps. We focus on the effect of regulation as distinct from ownership, and identify the effect of two different regulatory schemes on both publicly and privately owned Spanish electricity generators. Publicly owned generators were more efficient under cost of service regulation; private (but not public) firms responded to incentive regulation by increasing efficiency, bringing their productivity to similar levels. We introduce some novelty in modelling efficiency, including three pollutants and declared plant availability as outputs, and we test for the effect of environmental regulation in reducing pollutants.

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In this paper, we analyse the effect of promoting workers’ employability on labour productivity. To this end, we adapt a simple efficiency-wage model that includes the employer’s decision on the provision of opportunities for enhancing workers’ employment prospects in a context of job insecurity. We show that (i) by facilitating workers’ employability, the firm increases its labour productivity; and (ii) the higher the job uncertainty the higher the productivity gains due to the increase in employability. One of the advantages of our model is that it is simply enough to allow us to formulate two testable hypotheses, namely (i) the increase of jobs’ potential to enhance workers’ employability results in higher level of workers’ effort, and (ii) the provision of employability is more profitable for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) than for large firms. More precisely, SMEs should obtain higher effort levels from employees by fostering workers’ employability than large firms. We provide some evidence supporting these hypotheses from a highly representative sample of Spanish manufacturing firms. Copyright Springer 2007employability, worker effort, SMEs, Spain, J24, J31, M21,

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Document de Treball núm. 07/3La sèrie Documents de treball d'economia de l'empresa presenta els avanços i resultats d'investigacions en curs que han estat presentades i discutides en aquest departament; això no obstant, les opinions són responsabilitat dels autors. El document no pot ser reproduït total ni parcialment sense el consentiment de l'autor/a o autors/res. Dirigir els comentaris i suggerències directament a l'autor/a o autors/res, a la direcció que apareix a la pàgina següent.A Working Paper in the Documents de treball d'economia de l'empresa series is intended as a mean whereby a faculty researcher's thoughts and findings may be communicated to interested readers for their comments. Nevertheless, the ideas put forwards are responsibility of the author. Accordingly a Working Paper should not be quoted nor the data referred to without the written consent of the author. Please, direct your comments and suggestions to the author, which address shows up in the next page. AbstractThis paper analyses the impact of a series of managerial and organisational factors on occupational injuries. These consist of occupational safety measures, as regards both the intensity and the orientation of risk prevention in companies, and the adoption of certain work organisation practices, quality management and the use of flexible production technologies. We estimate a negative binomial regression based on a sample of 213Spanish industrial establishments, defining a constant random parameter to take account of non-observable heterogeneity. Our results show that occupational safety measures, the intensive use of quality management tools and the empowerment of workers all help to reduce the number of injuries. We have also confirmed the presence of synergies between the organisational factors analysed and the development of an occupational safety strategy featuring participation and the extension of prevention to all levels of the organisation.

This paper provides insights into how Costa Rican public hospitals responded to the pressure for increased efficiency and quality introduced by the reforms carried out over the period 1997-2001. To that purpose we compute a generalized output distance function by means of non-parametric mathematical programming to construct a productivity index, which accounts for productivity changes while controlling for quality of care. Our results show an improvement in hospital performance mainly driven by quality increases. The adoption of management contracts seems to have contributed to such enhancement, more notably for small hospitals. Further, productivity growth is primarily due to technical and scale efficiency change rather than technological change. A number of policy implications are drawn from these results.

This paper surveys the literature on scale and scope economies in the water and sewerage industry. The magnitude of scale and scope economies determines the cost efficient configuration of any industry. In the case of a regulated sector, reliable estimates of these economies are relevant to inform reform proposals that promote vertical (un)bundling and mergers. The empirical evidence allows some general conclusions. First, there is considerable evidence for the existence of vertical scope economies between upstream water production and distribution. Second, there is only mixed evidence on the existence of (dis)economies of scope between water and sewerage activities. Third, economies of scale exist up to certain output level, and diseconomies of scale arise if the company increases its size beyond this level. However, the optimal scale of utilities also appears to vary considerably between countries. Finally, we briefly consider the implications of our findings for water pricing and point to several directions for necessary future empirical research on the measurement of these economies, and explaining their cross country variation.