This article seeks to explain the recent growth in the adoption of air bags in new automobiles. Our analysis focuses on market forces, that is, consumers' willingness to pay for air bags and automakers' responsiveness to consumers' willingness to pay. We find that air bags were offered by...

Policymakers could implement available, well-tested technologies to improve the efficiency of highway pricing, investment, and operations, which would improve travel speeds, reliability, and safety and reduce highway expenditures. Unfortunately, political and bureaucratic impediments to...

In this article we develop a dynamic model of household vehicle ownership and utilization behavior by using data that were generated before, during, and after the 1979 energy crisis. The principal empirical findings are that households have maintained a distinct preference for American over...

The offset hypothesis predicts consumers adapt to innovations that improve safety by becoming less vigilant about safety. Previous tests have used aggregate data that may confound the effect of a safety policy with those consumers who are most affected by it. We test the hypothesis using...