No Pain, No Gain - The Effects of Exports on Effort, Injury, and Illness

Aug 28, 2026

Uploaded by Noah

Increased job effort can raise productivity and income but put workers at increased risk of illness and injury. The study combines Danish health data with matched worker-firm information to examine how rising exports affect individual effort, injury, and illness. Results show that exogenous firm export increases lengthen working hours, reduce sick-leave days, raise injury rates, and increase sickness for women. A novel framework aggregates total utility losses from multiple non-fatal diseases and injuries.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages66

Reading Time2 h 46 min

AccessFree to download

ABSTRACT

1. Introduction

Effort, productivity, and health linkages

Identification strategy and research design

NBER WORKING PAPER SERIES NO PAIN, NO GAIN: THE EFFECTS OF EXPORTS ON EFFORT, INJURY, AND ILLNESS David Hummels Jakob Munch Chong Xiang Working Paper 22365 [http://www.nber.org/papers/w22365](http://www.nber.org/papers/w22365) NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138 July 2016 We thank the Danish Council for Independent Research | Social Sciences for funding. For helpful comments we thank Osea Giuntella, Nils Gottfries and seminar participants at NHH Bergen, University of Oslo, University of Oxford, ESWC Montreal, University of Lund, Singapore Management University, University College Dublin, Copenhagen Business School, Aarhus University, IFN Stockholm, University of Chicago, Uppsala University and University of Oxford Trade and Health Workshop. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research. NBER working papers are circulated for discussion and comment purposes. They have not been peer-reviewed or been subject to the review by the NBER Board of Directors that accompanies official NBER publications. © 2016 by David Hummels, Jakob Munch, and Chong Xiang. All rights reserved. Short sections of text, not to exceed two paragraphs, may be quoted without explicit permission provided that full credit, including © notice, is given to the source. No Pain, No Gain: The Effects of Exports on Effort, Injury, and Illness David Hummels, Jakob Munch, and Chong Xiang NBER Working Paper No. 22365 July 2016 JEL No. F1,F6,I1,J2,J3 ABSTRACT Increased job effort can raise productivity and income but put workers at increased risk of illness and injury. We combine Danish data on individuals’ health with Danish matched worker-firm data to understand how rising exports affect individual workers’ effort, injury, and illness. We find that when firm exports rise for exogenous reasons: 1. Workers work longer hours and take fewer sick-leave days; 2. Workers have higher rates of injury, both overall and correcting for hours worked; and 3. Women have higher sickness rates. For example, a 10% exogenous increase in exports increases women’s rates of injury by 6.4%, and hospitalizations due to heart attacks or strokes by 15% . Finally, we develop a novel framework to calculate the marginal disutility of any non-fatal disease, such as heart attacks, and to aggregate across multiple types of sickness conditions and injury to compute the total utility loss. While the ex-ante utility loss for the average worker is small relative to the wage gain from rising exports, the ex-post utility loss is much larger for those who actually get injured or sick. David Hummels Krannert School of Management 403 West State Street Purdue University West Lafayette, IN 47907-1310 and NBER [hummelsd@purdue.edu](hummelsd@purdue.edu) Jakob Munch Department of Economics University of Copenhagen Øster Farimagsgade 5 Building 26 DK-1353 Copenhagen K [Jakob.Roland.Munch@econ.ku.dk](Jakob.Roland.Munch@econ.ku.dk) Chong Xiang Department of Economics Purdue University 403 West State Street West Lafayette, IN 47907-2506 [cxiang@purdue.edu](cxiang@purdue.edu) A online appendix is available at [http://www.nber.org/data-appendix/w22365](http://www.nber.org/data-appendix/w22365) 1. Introduction Increased job effort by workers may raise productivity and income both for those workers and the firms who employ them. But increased effort may come with a potential downside: putting in longer hours or working more intensively may endanger health.1 Sorting out the linkages between effort, productivity and health can be difficult. Healthier workers may be capable of working harder or longer hours, or conversely,“type A” individuals may desire to work harder and suffer health consequences, not as a result of work, but as a result of a comprehensively intensive approach to life. Working more intensively may also r

FAQs

How do exports affect worker effort in the paper?

When firm exports rise for exogenous reasons, workers work longer hours and take fewer sick-leave days, indicating increased effort.

What health outcomes change when exports increase?

Workers face higher overall injury rates (including after accounting for hours worked) and women have higher sickness rates. The study also reports larger hospitalization rates for heart attacks or strokes.

How does the paper quantify the overall utility loss from health events?

It develops a framework to calculate the marginal disutility of non-fatal diseases and aggregates disutility across multiple sickness conditions and injuries to compute total utility loss.

Aug 28, 2026

Uploaded by Noah