Nuremberg Research Seminar in Economics on 5 July 2023 – LG 0.423
You are invited to join the weekly Nuremberg Research Seminar in Economics on 5 July 2023, from 13.15 to 14.45 pm. The seminar will be held in room LG 0.423. Sebastian Schwenen (Technical University Munich) will be talking about „How (not) to manage nuclear safety”.
More information can be found here:
Safety is of quintessential importance in managing nuclear plants, considering the high societal cost of nuclear incidents. Yet, the existing literature on the drivers of nuclear safety is limited and primarily focused on market incentives or plant technology. Here, we look inside the firm and analyze the effect of organizational practices on nuclear incidents. We use comprehensive data from the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which measures the training and preparedness of nuclear plants’ personnel to handle emergencies. There is variation in staff preparedness across plants, and, as expected, lower preparedness leads to more human-related incidents. Exploring the sources of variation in organizational practices, we show that closer geographic proximity to the nuclear industry regulator and more intense scrutiny triggered by the Fukushima disaster drive a significant increase in staff preparedness. By contrast, financial constraints or ownership structure have no significant effect. Overall, our results stress the critical role of monitoring plants’ organizational practices rather than relying solely on market incentives to ensure safety within the nuclear industry.