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Title: The Worker, the Firm, and the Decision to Use Drugs
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Hoyt, Gail Mitchell |
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The Worker, the Firm, and the Decision to Use Drugs Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Kentucky, 1992 Cohort(s): NLSY79 Publisher: UMI - University Microfilms, Bell and Howell Information and Learning Keyword(s): Drug Use; Firms; Heterogeneity; Simultaneity; Substance Use; Work Attitudes Substance abuse in the United States has increased dramatically in the past few decades, bringing costs to both users and society. As substance use has come to the forefront of public attention, this new awareness has been manifested in recent legislation and in the increased efforts of various organizations to prevent and control substance use. In order to investigate the effects of the vast quantity of resources devoted to substance control, I simultaneously estimate substance demand, wage, and drug control policy equations. This framework allows me to examine how employee assistance programs and drug testing affect drug use and how drug use in turn affects productivity, while controlling for the potential of worker sorting with regard to drug control policy. I depart from previous work by focusing on how drug use affects the user's employment status and earnings while incorporating the firm's attempts to discourage drug use in the workplace through drug testing and monitoring within an expected utility framework. While past studies have considered labor market effects of substance use, none have considered how firm structure and monitoring may also influence substance use. Because the market price of illicit drugs is difficult to obtain, and perhaps not as crucial to the drug user's consumption decision as the effective price, I incorporate the effective price as a combination of the probability of being caught using drugs while at work and the adverse effects associated with dismissal. I test for not only the direct effects of drug control policy within the firm, but the indirect sorting effects. Empirical results show that wages and the use of various licit and illicit substances tend to be positively correlated until controls for unobserved heterogeneity are incorporated, in which case a negative correlation arises. Findings also indicate that drug testing, employee assistance programs, and formal workplace substance use policy have a significant negative impact on workplace marijuana, cocaine, and alcohol use. Also, users of all three substances tend to sort away from firms with control policies present. |
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Bibliography Citation
Hoyt, Gail Mitchell. The Worker, the Firm, and the Decision to Use Drugs. Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Kentucky, 1992. |