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- June 2020
- Article
How Scheduling Can Bias Quality Assessment: Evidence from Food Safety Inspections
By: Maria Ibanez and Michael W. Toffel
Accuracy and consistency are critical for inspections to be an effective, fair, and useful tool for assessing risks, quality, and suppliers—and for making decisions based on those assessments. We examine how inspector schedules could introduce bias that erodes... View Details
Keywords: Assessment; Bias; Inspection; Scheduling; Econometric Analysis; Empirical Research; Regulation; Health; Food; Safety; Quality; Performance Consistency; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms
Ibanez, Maria, and Michael W. Toffel. "How Scheduling Can Bias Quality Assessment: Evidence from Food Safety Inspections." Management Science 66, no. 6 (June 2020): 2396–2416. (Revised February 2019. Featured in Harvard Business Review, Forbes, Food Safety Magazine, Food Safety News, and KelloggInsight. (2020 MSOM Responsible Research Finalist.))
- 2018
- Working Paper
How Scheduling Can Bias Quality Assessment: Evidence from Food Safety Inspections
By: Maria Ibanez and Michael W. Toffel
Many production processes are subject to inspection to ensure they meet quality, safety, and environmental standards imposed by companies and regulators. Inspection accuracy is critical to inspections being a useful input to assessing risks, allocating quality... View Details
Keywords: Assessment; Bias; Inspection; Scheduling; Econometric Analysis; Empirical Research; Regulation; Health; Food; Safety; Quality; Performance Consistency; Performance Evaluation; Food and Beverage Industry; Service Industry
Ibanez, Maria, and Michael W. Toffel. "How Scheduling Can Bias Quality Assessment: Evidence from Food Safety Inspections." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 17-090, April 2017. (Revised October 2018. Formerly titled "Assessing the Quality of Quality Assessment: The Role of Scheduling". Featured in Forbes, Food Safety Magazine, and Food Safety News.)
- August 1994 (Revised May 1995)
- Case
Engineering Inspection & Insurance Company
By: Robert H. Hayes
Engineering Inspection & Insurance Co. (EIIC) is a small but highly successful company that offers machinery and boiler inspection and insurance services. After years of above-average growth and profits, both are retreating toward the industry average, policy delivery... View Details
Keywords: Service Operations; Business Strategy; Organizational Design; Organizational Structure; Insurance; Strategic Planning; Problems and Challenges; Insurance Industry; United States
Hayes, Robert H. "Engineering Inspection & Insurance Company." Harvard Business School Case 695-009, August 1994. (Revised May 1995.)
- February 2016 (Revised October 2017)
- Case
The Jungle and the Debate over Federal Meat Inspection in 1906
By: David Moss and Marc Campasano
In early June 1906, the House Committee on Agriculture heard testimony from two investigators appointed by President Theodore Roosevelt to verify allegations of unsanitary conditions at Chicago slaughterhouses that had appeared in Upton Sinclair's recent novel, The... View Details
- 1 Jun 2015
- Conference Presentation
Empirical Research Opportunities on Inspection and Compliance
Toffel, Michael W. "Empirical Research Opportunities on Inspection and Compliance." Paper presented at the Research on Effective Government: Inspection and Compliance Workshop, University of Maryland. Maryland Center for Economics and Policy and Harvard Business School, Washington, DC, June 1, 2015.
- September 2014
- Article
OSHA Inspections Should Be Welcome: Results from a Natural Field Experiment in California
By: David I. Levine and Michael W. Toffel
For companies with strong internal occupational safety and health auditing programs, OSHA inspections might seem a formality that risk uncovering, at most, nitpicky deviations from the thousands of pages of safety regulations. For those with poor safety practices, OSHA... View Details
Keywords: Business and Government Relations; Operations; Safety; Governance Compliance; United States; California
Levine, David I., and Michael W. Toffel. "OSHA Inspections Should Be Welcome: Results from a Natural Field Experiment in California." The Compass (Newsletter of the American Society of Safety Engineers) 14, no. 1 (September 2014): 4.
- December 1974 (Revised May 1990)
- Case
Hartford Steam Boiler Inspection and Insurance Co.
By: W. Earl Sasser and Robert L. Banks
Keywords: Insurance Industry
Sasser, W. Earl, and Robert L. Banks. "Hartford Steam Boiler Inspection and Insurance Co." Harvard Business School Case 675-088, December 1974. (Revised May 1990.)
- May 18, 2012
- Article
Randomized Government Safety Inspections Reduce Worker Injuries with No Detectable Job Loss
By: David I Levine, Michael W. Toffel and Matthew S. Johnson
Controversy surrounds occupational health and safety regulators, with some observers claiming that workplace regulations damage firms' competitiveness and destroy jobs and others arguing that they make workplaces safer at little cost to employers and employees. We... View Details
Keywords: Regulation; Occupational Safety; Evaluation; Regression; Matching; Difference In Differences; Safety; Health; Working Conditions; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Competitive Advantage; Performance; Manufacturing Industry; California
Levine, David I., Michael W. Toffel, and Matthew S. Johnson. "Randomized Government Safety Inspections Reduce Worker Injuries with No Detectable Job Loss." Science 336, no. 6083 (May 18, 2012): 907–911. (Online supplement (appendix). Featured in an article by the head of US OSHA, and in U.S. News & World Report and many other news outlets. Basis of U.S. Congressional testimony on promoting safe workplaces.)
- 2013
- Article
Where Not to Eat? Improving Public Policy by Predicting Hygiene Inspections Using Online Reviews
By: Jun Seok Kang, Polina Kuznetsova, Yejin Choi and Michael Luca
Restaurant hygiene inspections are often cited as a success story of public disclosure. Hygiene grades influence customer decisions and serve as an accountability system for restaurants. However, cities (which are responsible for inspections) have limited resources to... View Details
Keywords: Safety; Food; Governance Compliance; Mathematical Methods; Applications and Software; Public Administration Industry; Retail Industry; Food and Beverage Industry
Kang, Jun Seok, Polina Kuznetsova, Yejin Choi, and Michael Luca. "Where Not to Eat? Improving Public Policy by Predicting Hygiene Inspections Using Online Reviews." Proceedings of the Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (2013): 1443–1448.
- May 16, 2019
- Article
To Improve Food Inspections, Change the Way They're Scheduled
By: Maria Ibanez and Michael W. Toffel
Health inspections are an important tool to increase food safety, but there are still 48 million cases of food-borne illnesses and 128,000 hospitalizations every year in the United States. Our research finds that inspectors reported fewer health code violations as they... View Details
Keywords: Inspection; Scheduling; Food; Safety; Health; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Performance Improvement
Ibanez, Maria, and Michael W. Toffel. "To Improve Food Inspections, Change the Way They're Scheduled." Harvard Business Review (website) (May 16, 2019).
- Aug 2012
- Talk
Evaluating OSHA Inspections for Intended and Unintended Outcomes
Toffel, Michael W. "Evaluating OSHA Inspections for Intended and Unintended Outcomes." Liberty Mutual Research Institute for Safety Seminar, Liberty Mutual Research Institute for Safety, Hopkinton, MA, United States, August 2012.
- Article
Crowdsourcing City Government: Using Tournaments to Improve Inspection Accuracy
By: Edward Glaeser, Andrew Hillis, Scott Duke Kominers and Michael Luca
The proliferation of big data makes it possible to better target city services like hygiene inspections, but city governments rarely have the in-house talent needed for developing prediction algorithms. Cities could hire consultants, but a cheaper alternative is to... View Details
Keywords: User-generated Content; Operations; Tournaments; Policy-making; Machine Learning; Online Platforms; Analytics and Data Science; Mathematical Methods; City; Infrastructure; Business Processes; Government and Politics
Glaeser, Edward, Andrew Hillis, Scott Duke Kominers, and Michael Luca. "Crowdsourcing City Government: Using Tournaments to Improve Inspection Accuracy." American Economic Review: Papers and Proceedings 106, no. 5 (May 2016): 114–118.
- October 1978 (Revised September 1993)
- Case
Hartford Steam Boiler Inspection and Insurance Co.: Treaty Reinsurance
Oksman, Warren. "Hartford Steam Boiler Inspection and Insurance Co.: Treaty Reinsurance." Harvard Business School Case 179-061, October 1978. (Revised September 1993.)
- 30 Mar 2007
- Conference Presentation
Inspection Holidays and Compliance Outcomes: Examining the Outcomes of Self-Policing
- February 26, 2024
- Article
Making Workplaces Safer Through Machine Learning
By: Matthew S. Johnson, David I. Levine and Michael W. Toffel
Machine learning algorithms can dramatically improve regulatory effectiveness. This short article describes the authors' scholarly work that shows how the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) could have reduced nearly twice as many occupational... View Details
Keywords: Government Experimentation; Auditing; Inspection; Evaluation; Process Improvement; Government Administration; AI and Machine Learning; Safety; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms
Johnson, Matthew S., David I. Levine, and Michael W. Toffel. "Making Workplaces Safer Through Machine Learning." Regulatory Review (February 26, 2024).
- 25 Feb 2013
- Talk
OSHA Inspections: Saving Workers or Killing Jobs? Evidence from Randomized Inspections in California
Toffel, Michael W. "OSHA Inspections: Saving Workers or Killing Jobs? Evidence from Randomized Inspections in California." Harvard-NIOSH Education and Research Center Seminar, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) and Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, MA, February 25, 2013.
- April 2024
- Article
Decision Authority and the Returns to Algorithms
By: Hyunjin Kim, Edward L. Glaeser, Andrew Hillis, Scott Duke Kominers and Michael Luca
We evaluate a pilot in an Inspections Department to explore the returns to a pair of algorithms that varied in their sophistication. We find that both algorithms provided substantial prediction gains, suggesting that even simple data may be helpful. However, these... View Details
Keywords: Algorithmic Aversion; Algorithmic Decision Making; Algorithms; Public Entrepreneurship; Govenment; Local Government; Crowdsourcing; Crowdsourcing Contests; Inspection; Principal-agent Theory; Government Administration; Decision Making; Public Administration Industry; United States
Kim, Hyunjin, Edward L. Glaeser, Andrew Hillis, Scott Duke Kominers, and Michael Luca. "Decision Authority and the Returns to Algorithms." Strategic Management Journal 45, no. 4 (April 2024): 619–648.
- October 2017 (Revised April 2018)
- Case
Improving Worker Safety in the Era of Machine Learning (A)
By: Michael W. Toffel, Dan Levy, Jose Ramon Morales Arilla and Matthew S. Johnson
Managers make predictions all the time: How fast will my markets grow? How much inventory do I need? How intensively should I monitor my suppliers? Which potential customers will be most responsive to a particular marketing campaign? Which job candidates should I... View Details
Keywords: Machine Learning; Policy Implementation; Empirical Research; Inspection; Occupational Safety; Occupational Health; Regulation; Analysis; Forecasting and Prediction; Policy; Operations; Supply Chain Management; Safety; Manufacturing Industry; Construction Industry; United States
Toffel, Michael W., Dan Levy, Jose Ramon Morales Arilla, and Matthew S. Johnson. "Improving Worker Safety in the Era of Machine Learning (A)." Harvard Business School Case 618-019, October 2017. (Revised April 2018.)
- Fall 2016
- Article
The Integrity of Private Third-party Compliance Monitoring
By: Jodi L. Short and Michael W. Toffel
Government agencies are increasingly turning to private, third-party monitors to inspect and assess regulated entities’ compliance with law. The integrity of these regulatory regimes rests on the validity of the information third-party monitors provide to regulators.... View Details
Keywords: Regulation; Compliance; Compliance Policies; Conflict Of Interest; Independent Third Party; Inspection; Audit Quality; Auditor; Audit; Environment; Safety; Conflict of Interests; Working Conditions; Labor; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Governance Compliance; Accounting Audits
Short, Jodi L., and Michael W. Toffel. "The Integrity of Private Third-party Compliance Monitoring." Administrative & Regulatory Law News 42, no. 1 (Fall 2016): 22–25.