Recreational Marijuana Sales Legalization and Monday Work Injury Claims

Abstract

Abstract An important stylized fact in the literature is that more Workers’ Compensation claims for difficult-to-diagnose injuries are filed on Monday than on any other day of the week. This paper studies the impact of recreational marijuana sales legalization on Monday work injury claims. Using restricted-use Workers’ Compensation claim data in Oregon and a Difference-in-Differences (DiD) model, I find the probability of overall Monday injuries increase by 4 percentage points after recreational marijuana sales legalization. The event study graphs suggest the medium-term effects appear to equal the short-term effects. Additionally, I do not find strong evidence to support those difficult-to-diagnose Monday injuries disproportionately increase after recreational marijuana sales legalization, suggesting a limited moral hazard of Monday injury claiming behavior after recreational marijuana sales legalization.