This article critically examines a growing trend in the economics of industrial health—the tendency to predict worker behavior on the basis of rational decision models and to draw policy conclusions from these predictions. The method is found weak, both conceptually and empirically. Conceptually, it finesses a serious problem of equity and makes unrealistic assumptions about worker behavior and the nature of accident causation. Empirically, its predictions contradict the results of 40 years of accident research, and the evidence advanced to support it is far from convincing. In addition, it produces dangerous hypotheses in the sense in which that term is defined by the opponents of the “accident prone” theory.
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