Traffic fatalities are the leading cause of mortality in the United States despite being preventable. While several policies have been introduced to improve traffic safety and their effects have been well documented, the role of transitory health shocks or situational factors at explaining...

Over the last thirty years, the use of child safety seats in motor vehicles has increased dramatically, fueled by well publicized information campaigns and legal mandates. In spite of this movement, there is relatively little empirical evidence regarding the efficacy of child safety seats...

Drivers have been running an 'arms race' on American roads by buying increasingly heavy vehicles such as SUVs, vans and light trucks. Families view large vehicles as providing better protection to their own occupants if a crash occurs, but these vehicles pose an increased danger to occupants of...

Road maintenance constitutes a significant component of public transportation spending at all levels of government. Formulation of efficient transportation infrastructure policy requires information about factors affecting road and traffic conditions. We generate the first causal evidence that...

Cycling is popular among children, but results in thousands of injuries annually. In recent years, many states and localities have enacted bicycle helmet laws. We examine direct and indirect effects of these laws on injuries. Using hospital-level panel data and triple difference models, we find...

Using data from the Fatality Analysis Reporting System for the period 1983-1997, Cohen and Einav (Review of Economics and Statistics 2003; 85(4): 828-843) found that mandatory seatbelt laws were associated with a 4 to 6 percent reduction in traffic fatalities among motor vehicle occupants. After...

The safety of the commercial airline industry has attracted considerable public attention and debate since economic deregulation of the industry in 1978. These concerns have energized economic research on three aspects of airline safety. First, has the level of airline safety declined since...

We study the evolution of the social norm of "cooperation" in a dynamic environment. Each agent lives for two periods and interacts with agents from the previous and next generations via a coordination game. Social norms emerge as patterns of behavior that are stable in part due to agents'...

A quota system with an associated deadline may retain the possibility of worker procrastination and related deadline behaviors. A performance appraisal system based on continuous temporal incentives, on the other hand, has the potential to alleviate deadline effects but may lose some of the...

Beliefs about whether effort pays off govern some of the most fundamental choices individuals make. This paper uses China's Cultural Revolution to understand how these beliefs can be affected, how they impact behavior, and how they are transmitted across generations. During the Cultural...