Smoke-Free Laws and Employee Turnover

Authors

• Eric C. Thompson, University of Nebraska-LincolnFollow
• Ellen J. Hahn, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KYFollow
• Glenn Blomquist, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KYFollow
• John Garen, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KYFollow
• Don Mullineaux, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY
• Nola Ogunro, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY
• Mary K. Rayens, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KYFollow

Document Type

Article

Date of this Version

July 2008

Comments

Published in Contemporary Economic Policy 26:3 (July 2008), pp. 351–359; doi 10.1111/j.1465-7287.2007.00091.x Copyright © 2008 Western Economic Association International; published by Blackwell Publishing/John Wiley & Sons., Inc. http://www.interscience.wiley.com/jpages/1074-3529 Used by permission.

Abstract

This study examines how smoke-free laws influence turnover among restaurant workers. The study uses a unique data set of payroll records of a franchisee of a national full-service restaurant chain operating 23 restaurants in the state of Arizona, a state where several communities have adopted smoke-free laws. Municipal smoke-free laws did not, on average, have a statistically significant effect on the probability of employee separation in the years after implementation. These results suggest that training costs associated with employee turnover would not rise for full-service restaurants in municipalities that adopt smoke-free laws.