Construction Site Regulation and OSHA Decentralization

Abstract

Promoting regulatory compliance in the construction industry has long been a high institutional priority of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). Yet OSHA officials carry out enforcement activities in only 29 U.S. states. Elsewhere, it is state officials who conduct inspections. This paper links the partly decentralized structure of OSHA enforcement to interstate disparities in regulatory enforcement. First, construction regulations seem to be less strictly enforced by state inspectors. Second, only in the federal enforcement regime do repeat inspections of the same construction site or firm significantly reduce the number of future violations found.