THE IMPACT OF WORK ACCIDENTS ON THE SICKNESS/HEALTH CARE EXPENSES IN ROMANIA. A PANEL DATA APPROACH.

The main objective of this research is to measure the impact of work accidents rate on the sickness/health care expenses in Romania during 2008-2013. Some of the work accidents might be caused by the professional diseases of the workers, but there is not a database with medical expenses only for professional disease. The statistical analysis proved that in Romania a consistent part of the expenses for sickness and health care are used to solve the health problems of people that suffered from accidents at the place of work. The time series is quite short and a panel data approach is chosen, the cross-sections being represented by these activities of national economy. A panel data approach is applied for all the economic activities in Romania. By taking into consideration all the sectors of the economy, the national perspective is analyzed using the panel technique. A random effects panel model was built for 2008-2013 and there is a positive and significant relationship between the rate of work accidents and sickness/ health care expenses in Romania. If the rate of work accidents increases with 1%, the medical expenses increases with less than 1%. 32.26% of the variation in expenses for sickness and health care in an economic activity is explained by the particularities of the work accidents in each activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]