Abstract

While stricter policies may enhance compliance, they may also encourage loophole exploiting behaviors that offset intended policy benefits. I exploit the gradual intensification of Seoul's vehicle control policy —an increasingly common policy instrument shaping pollution exposures in cities globally. In my theoretical framework, I model individual decisions to comply, exploit loopholes, or violate the policy outright, and assess how these responses vary with policy stringency. Empirical results support the theoretical prediction that higher policy intensity can induce greater loophole exploitation. I find loophole exploiting behaviors— driving outside regulated hours (before 6 a.m. or after 9 p.m.)—increased with policy tightening. Across multiple tightening events, the most stringent phase led to a 19% rise in loophole exploitation, the next to 13%, and the least stringent to 7%. I find a deterioration in air quality during non-crackdown hours. The resulting net health costs underscore the potential unintended consequences of intensified regulation. I emphasize the need to consider both the health benefits during crackdown hours and the health costs during non-crackdown hours to accurately estimate the true health impact of such policies.

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Abstract

Pedestrian deaths in the U.S. decreased until 2010, after which they began to rise. Our research aims to investigate the causes behind this recent increase in pedestrian fatalities, which is unique to the U.S., and to interpret this trend in terms of pedestrian-driver inequality. Our hypothesis is that the rising popularity of smartphones and heavy vehicles, such as SUVs, since 2010 has contributed to more frequent traffic accidents and more severe crashes, leading to an increase in pedestrian deaths. 

We found that increased smartphone penetration is associated with an increase of 0.02 to 0.05 in the average crash frequency. Furthermore, an additional 1,000 pounds (lb) increase in vehicle weight raises the risk of immediate fatality for a non-occupant by 12% in the event of a traffic accident. Distraction from smartphone usage also increases this risk; conversely, a smartphone network outage was found to lower a non-occupant's probability of immediate death by 3.5%.

Using smartphones while driving distracts drivers and lowers their driving performance, resulting in more frequent traffic accidents.  Heavy and large vehicles are more detrimental to non-occupants because the points of impact are more likely to strike the upper body, including the head, which is directly linked to the victim’s survival in the event of a collision. However, heavy and large vehicles provide greater safety for drivers, as they act as a shield in the event of a collision.

We emphasize the necessity of laws and regulations to protect non-occupants marginalized by U.S. transportation and automobile policies. We propose modifying the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standard, and we advocate for regulations that incentivize the production of lighter electric vehicles (EVs) and stricter regulations on smartphone use while driving in the U.S.

Abstract

The problem of asymmetry and presence of temporally diffused goods can be assessed by the framework described by the Dictator Game. We suggest two “multigenerational” versions of the basic game: sequential dictator game (SEQ) and simultaneous dictator game (SIM), both of which are characterised by a sequence of players who represent the fictitious generations in an intergenerational allocation problem. In the SEQ, a decision is made in each round where the current dictator (generation) allocates the endowment (that is passed down from the previous generation) between himself and all future generations. This contrasts with the SIM where only the initial dictator (generation) gets to make a decision by simultaneously allocating the initial endowment between himself and every other future generation. This simple paradigm allows to investigate the effect of different settings on the decision process of resource allocation. In particular, we seek to study whether giving the current "dictator" control over all future generations induces them to be more fair than if they had control over only themself. Additionally, we intend to measure correlation between these differences and basic sociodemographic information, collected with a questionnaire at the end of the experiment. The results of the study will give new insights about generosity and fairness in absence of reciprocity, and provide insights about possible strategies to increase fairness in intergenerational coordination problems.

Abstract

This study investigates the effect of additional federal government transfers to municipal governments on deforestation in Legal Amazon in Brazil. Depending on how the government budget is spent, the impact on forest cover can be negative or positive. The government transfers from the federal government to municipal governments change discretely at given population thresholds, opening the possibility of using a regression discontinuity design (RDD). Using fuzzy regression discontinuity design, the regression results show that increase in municipal budget exacerbate deforestation especially in municipalities with large populations and high forest cover ratios.