Penalties for speeding and their effect on moving violations: Evidence from Quebec drivers

In 2008, the province of Quebec drastically increased penalties for speeding well above the speed limit by doubling fines and instituting on-the-spot licence suspension. Using administrative driving and licensing records in Quebec from 2006 to 2010, we examine whether the new law discouraged unlawful driving behaviour by investigating the frequency with which motorists received traffic citations. We find that the new law was effective in deterring motorists from speeding. Moreover, the effect was most pronounced for males compared with females, for young compared with old, and especially so for drivers with high demerit point balances accumulated from past infractions compared with those with few or no tickets. In sum, the change in behaviour was most apparent for those drivers who were the intended targets for the legislation.     

DECIDING WHEN TO DECIDE: COLLECTIVE DELIBERATION AND OBSTRUCTION

We study the impact of deliberation rules on collective learning and decision making in committees. In contrast to much of the existing literature, this article makes a distinction between the final votes over policy proposals and the cloture votes that bring them about. We show how deliberation rules can cause Pareto-inefficient outcomes and failures to bring good proposals to a final vote, and how they affect the distribution of power among committee members in the deliberative process. We further show that deliberation rules are dynamically stable, even when they generate Pareto-inefficient outcomes.     

Statogenic climate change? Julian Simon and Institutions

The Review of Austrian Economics - Outside of economics (and even within), Julian Simon is mostly remembered for his famous bet on resource prices against biologist Paul Ehrlich. The bet is...     

Coalition-proof stable networks

Review of Economic Design - We propose the notion of coalition-proof stability for predicting the networks that could emerge when group deviations are allowed. A network is coalition-proof stable...     

The effect of non-financial performance measures,organisational politics and political skill on job performance: Evidence from China

We investigate the role of organisational politics (i.e., general political behaviour, going along to get ahead and pay and promotion policies) and political skill on the relationship between non-financial performance measures and job performance, relying on a sample of manufacturing firms in China. Results suggest that non-financial performance measures positively affect managers' job performance, and non-financial performance measures reduce general political behaviour and pay and promotion policies. Results further suggest that managers' political skill positively affects job performance, and political skill also moderates the relationships between (1) general political behaviour and (2) pay and promotion policies, and job performance.     

Intergenerational income mobility and economic freedom

Numerous studies have found that income inequality reduces the chances of upward relative mobility (i.e., climbing up the income ladder). However, most of this work ignores the role played by institutional quality (namely, economic freedom) in determining mobility and increasing the individual's set of choices. We fill this gap by empirically testing the direct and indirect (through economic growth) impacts of economic freedom on intergenerational income mobility. We find that economic freedom has both direct and indirect effects on intergenerational income mobility, while income inequality is a strong predictor of downward income mobility. When we incorporate findings about the purely mechanical relationship between inequality and intergeneration income mobility, we find that the legal system and property rights component of economic freedom matters more than inequality. These results suggest that good institutions can increase intergenerational income mobility.     

US state-level economic freedom during the COVID-19 pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic led to extensive new government regulations and lockdown policies that significantly reduced economic freedom across US states. Many of these new pandemic-related regulatory restrictions on economic freedom varied significantly from state to state but are largely missed by the existing Economic Freedom of North America Report (EFNA). This paper adjusts the Our World in Data COVID-19 Stringency Index into a state-level measure of lockdown regulatory freedom and then merges it into the EFNA index to better measure relative economic freedom across US states in 2020. We find significant differences in the relative ranking of economic freedom between states once we adjust for lockdown regulatory restrictions.