Abstract: Quite apart from government regulations and enforcement, employers usually have many incentives to keep workers safe and these have led to major reductions in deaths and injuries. But safety can be costly and disagreements about the worth of some safety measures are inevitable. Leaders of small firms will often have limited information about the risks they face and survey data show that they are less likely to recognize the benefits of safety investments. Preventing long-term exposures that can cause chronic diseases is especially costly and less likely to offer benefits to employers. Governments differ in their approaches to workplace safety. Some, like the United States, essentially train inspectors to identify, cite and punish failures to comply with a detailed list of requirements. Others rely less on punishment and more on training inspectors to offer advice to firms about how to improve. The latter focus less on compliance with detailed standards and more on systematic procedures to give more weight to safety. Evidence from manufacturing that inspections with penalties are followed by reductions in injuries indicates that inspections can affect outcomes beyond compliance. These studies rarely find that the size of the penalty has an effect, although it seems likely that unusually large penalties would draw management’s attention. Important reasons to comply with standards also include beliefs about the legitimacy of regulatory authorities and the fairness of the enforcement process as well as professional norms and empathy.