IT'S NO ACCIDENT: EVALUATING THE EFFECTIVENESS OF VEHICLE SAFETY INSPECTIONS

An increase in technology means that vehicles are more reliable than in the past. Accordingly, states have begun to discontinue their requirements for vehicle safety inspections. To gauge the effect of such changes, we examine traffic fatality data from 2000 to 2015, with emphasis on New Jersey, which ended safety inspection requirements in 2010. Utilizing a synthetic controls approach, we conclude that ending these requirements did not result in a significant increase in the frequency or intensity of accidents due to car failure, implying that the consumer and government expenditures used for inspections could be reallocated to other areas of travel safety. (JEL R41, Z18, C23)     

核电站事故对国家食品安全的影响——以日本福岛核电站事故为例

以2011年3月日本福岛第一核电站事故为例,从影响内容与影响途径两方面探讨了核电站事故对国家及地区食品安全的巨大冲击,指出核电站的安全运转对国家或地区的食品安全及食品贸易意义重大,唯有通过国际交流合作、全面的风险评估、完善预警应对机制,方能确保核能的安全使用并避免其安全事故对食品安全造成的负面影响;同时,在描述中国核电站现状的基础上,提出了保障食品供应链的高效运作与加强核电站安全管理的措施建议,以期寻求核能立国与食品安全的和谐发展路径。     

沿海地区建筑企业安全管理绩效评价研究

对我国沿海地区的建筑企业安全绩效进行调查研究,利用数据包络分析(DEA)中的C2R模型和SE-C2R模型对建筑企业的安全管理绩效进行评价,结果表明:安全管理绩效有效的建筑企业表现出“低投入、低事故率”,相反无效的建筑企业表现出“高投入、高事故率”,证明了高安全管理投入并不一定能够带来低事故发生率;安全管理绩效无效的建筑企业具有提高安全管理绩效的潜质和改善空间,关键在于如何科学地配置安全管理投入资源;同时也表明DEA是评价建筑企业安全管理绩效的一种有效方法.     

A theoretic reappraisal of the offsetting behavior hypothesis

This paper examines the theoretical basis of the claim that product safety regulation may not lead to either a decrease in accident rates or an increase in consumer health. We find that the technology which determines the household's probability of having an accident may guarantee that regulation will lower accident rates, and that therefore, predictions about the effect of regulation on the incidence of accidents can be made without detailed knowledge of consumer behavior.     

The impact of OSHA inspections on manufacturing injury rates.

This paper estimates the effects of OSHA inspections on injury rates at the plant level. The methodology involves comparing injury rates of plants inspected 'early'in a given year with those inspected "late" in the year, after controlling for prior injury rates and other factors. The results suggest that OSHA inspections in 1973 reduced injury rates by about 16 percent, but that 1974 inspections had no statistically significant impact.     

SAVED BY THE MORNING BELL: SCHOOL START TIME AND TEEN CAR ACCIDENTS

Adolescents today suffer from chronic sleep deprivation due to a combination of biological changes to the circadian clock and early morning school bell times. Many school districts are now considering delaying high school start times to accommodate the sleep schedules of teens. This paper explores whether such policy changes can have an unexpected impact on teen car accident rates. This impact could function both through a direct effect on teen sleep deprivation and indirectly through changes to the driving environment, that is, shifting the time and conditions under which teens commute to school. By focusing on late‐night accidents and employing a difference‐in‐differences strategy using adult drivers as a control group, I find evidence of a persistent sleep deprivation mechanism. A 15‐minute delay in school start time causes a significant decrease in late‐night teen accidents of approximately 23%. However, I also find evidence of an opposing mechanism that is present during the morning commuting hours. A 15‐minute delay in high school start time leads to a 21% increase in morning teen car accidents. (JEL I29, J13, R41)     

Contagion effects in the electric utility industry following the Fukushima nuclear accident

This article examines intra-industry information transfers in the European and Japanese electric industry in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear accident. For European conventional utilities, the downward price drift is relatively small and transient in nature. Yet, we find positive and lingering effects of the accident on the shares of alternative electric utilities. Japanese utilities were hit the hardest and the shock seems to be long-lasting. An interesting finding of this article is the abrupt increase (decrease) in the systematic risk of conventional (alternative) electric utilities following the event. In Europe, we could only document a decrease in the idiosyncratic risk of conventional utilities, pointing to enhanced return synchronicity in the conventional power industry. In turn, total risk seems to be stationary around the accident. In rebuttal, idiosyncratic and systematic risks (and consequently total risk) have substantially risen in Japan since the event. Finally, intercept values related to European utilities remained stable around the accident while Japanese utilities incurred a substantial decline in their daily average returns as captured by alpha shifts.     

Trucking deregulation and highway safety: The effect of the 1980 Motor Carrier Act

The relationship between deregulation in the trucking industry and highway safety is an important economic and social issue. Analyses thus far have concentrated on the relationship between the downward pressure imposed on freight rates by deregulation and total safety investment by firms. Two issues which have been ignored are the effects that deregulation had on route carriage restrictions and total firm mileage. We show that the inclusion of these factors yields a model in which the relationship between motor carrier deregulation and highway safety is dependent upon the relative effects of all three factors. Estimation of the model using accident data implies that trucking deregulation did not deteriorate highway safety and may have actually improved it.     

Optimal Fines under Announced and Surprise Inspections

This paper examines optimal fines in a regulatory framework where the regulator can choose either surprise or announced inspections to monitor a firm for compliance. The firm can invest in detection avoidance, but it receives a fine if the regulator discovers that it is noncompliant. In the welfare maximization problem, we focus on the trade‐off between the frequency of inspections and the magnitude of the fine. We find that when inspections are unannounced, the optimal fine is maximal, but when they are announced, the optimal fine may be less than maximal.     

Japan's Post‐Fukushima Energy Policy Challenges

The Great East Japan Earthquake and the successive accidents at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station are stark reminders of the importance of energy, which is the basis of economic activity and national governance. Urgent responses have been conducted since March 11, 2011, including controlling the consequences of the nuclear accident, dealing with the short‐term power shortages, and a comprehensive review of Japan's long‐term national energy policy. Nationwide discussions and reviews of these issues are still continuing. Even today, more than 2 years after March 11, many problems remain unsolved and Japanese society has to face uncertainty and challenges about its energy future. In the current difficult situation, Japan needs to achieve “3Es (e nergy security, environmental protection, and economic efficiency)” plus “S” (safety) and “M” (macro economy protection) simultaneously, taking account of the new realities following the Fukushima accident. This paper tries to identify the energy‐related challenges that Japan has to face and tries to recommend the concept of the “energy best mix policy” for Japan, by describing the present status of energy issues in Japan and the national debate on energy policy.     

Choosing between multiple regional trade agreements: Evidence from Japan’s imports

Mega‐regional trade agreements (RTAs) are likely to overlap with other RTAs. When such overlaps occur, firms must choose the tariff rates from multiple RTAs. By employing data on Japan’s imports by tariff schemes, we investigate how RTA tariff rates affect firms’ decisions on tariff schemes when multiple RTAs exist. Our finding is that RTA utilization rates are higher when tariff rates for that RTA are lower (own effect) and tariff rates for alternative RTAs are higher (cross effect). We also found that the absolute magnitudes of own and cross effects are larger in bilateral and multilateral RTAs, respectively.     

Effects of regulatory burden and corruption on firm performance: Evidence from Moldova

Firms in Moldova face a high level of regulatory burden, as proxied by the number of inspections by public authorities. At the same time, they face high levels of corruption. We examine the effect of frequent inspections on four measures of firm performance: labour and total factor productivity, and levels of tangible and intangible assets. We also investigate how corruption affects the relationship between inspections and firm performance. We perform panel data analysis using firm-level administrative data and survey data from Moldova in 2005–2015. The results show that inspections and corruption each affect firm productivity negatively, but corruption moderates the negative effect of inspections. We also find that inspections and intangible assets are positively correlated, but this correlation is weaker for higher levels of corruption. Finally we examine whether these results differ by industry, firm size and ownership types. Inspections and corruption affect medium and large firms, and state-owned enterprises differently from micro and small firms and private firms respectively.     

The CPSC's ATV risk model

Evaluations of the Consumer Product Safety Commission's impact on safety have been generally unfavorable. The CPSC's questionable effectiveness may be because many of its actions have been based on erroneous assessments of the factors associated with accident risk. This paper analyzes the statistical underpinnings of the CPSC's regulatory approach to all-terrain vehicles (ATVs), one of the most prominent issues faced by the agency. By investigating a wider range of risk models, we find the principal provisions of the CPSC's ATV policy, most notably stopping the sale of new three-wheel ATVs, are not supported by the risk data.We acknowledge with gratitude the helpful comments of Robert Trost, Kip Viscusi, and the referees, and the assistance of Monica Bettendorf and Chung-Shing Lee. The usual disclaimer applies.     

A NOTE ON GOVERNMENT INTERVENTION IN OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH: THE CASE FOR AN ACCIDENT TAX AND A SAFETY BONUS SCHEME

Using a fairly general principal-agent model in which both firms and workers can affect the risk of a workplace accident, this note shows theoretically that an accident tax and/or a safety bonus scheme could unambiguously reduce the incidence of workplace accidents, contrary to the ambiguous theoretical results that are obtained with safety regulations     

Automobile quality choice under pollution control regulation

In this paper, we develop a modified quality choice model to study the effects of various mobile-source air pollution control regulations. We have a single producer that supplies a fixed number of car types (two) but faces a spectrum of consumers differing in their valuation of car quality. The car manufacturer chooses the quality levels of the two car types as well as the sales mix between the two types and the size of the market it wishes to supply. By endogenizing both the sales mix and the market size, while still allowing quality to be a choice variable, we are able to more completely analyze the impact of any car pollution control regulation. Existing studies of this impact either focus on the model line adjustment response (shifts in the quality array) or on the price adjustment response (changes in the sales mix and market size). In allowing for both the model line and the price adjustment options, we find that the corporate average fuel efficiency (CAFE) standard is unambiguously welfare superior to the low-emission vehicle quantity constraint (LEV) and zero-emission vehicle (ZEV) programs. We also show that the effects of the CAFE standard are not equivalent to those of a fuel tax, as previously found, and that, for a given car pollution target, the former is preferred to the latter.      

REGULATION OF POLLUTION IN THE LABORATORY: RANDOM INSPECTIONS,AMBIENT INSPECTIONS,AND COMMITMENT PROBLEMS

We compare experimentally a traditional random inspection policy and a variant where the agency may carry out a preliminary inspection of the level of ambient pollution before implementing any individual inspection. Since the agency may have an incentive to announce high inspection probabilities and then secretly renege on its announcement to avoid implementing costly inspections, we are also interested in the agency's commitment power. We find that overall, ambient inspections increase efficiency but the effect is weaker than expected when the agency has no commitment power; and polluters' reactions to the lack of commitment power of the agency vary depending on whether the agency uses ambient inspections or not.     

Bilateral and Third‐Country Exchange Rate Effects on Multinational Activity

In an earlier paper, we showed that bilateral exchange rates are important determinants of multinational activity of both the US and Japan and that increases in the bilateral and third‐country exchange rates exert opposing effects on bilateral multinational activity. Furthermore, the signs of the exchange rate coefficients differ between Japan and the US. In this paper, we formulate a three‐country model with coexisting exporters and multinational firms that engage in Cournot competition to rationalize these effects. In this model, we identify two counteracting effects which govern the bilateral and third‐country effects of an exchange rate increase on bilateral multinational activity. Our theoretical framework is flexible enough to explain the Japanese as well as the US patterns of exchange rate effects and it allows us to identify those factors that are responsible for the respective differences.     

日本报废汽车拆解业的发展及对我国的启示

运用对比分析的方法,对日本报废汽车拆解业的发展历程进行了研究。认为日本报废汽车拆解行业通过发展营销人员、加强质量和库存管理以及构建库存情报共享的网络体系实现了经济与环境效益的统一。日本拆解行业的做法值得中国学习、借鉴。我国的汽车回收行业应实行专业化分工、进一步提高报废汽车拆解水平,并通过加强政府的宏观指导提高对报废汽车回收拆解的监督管理水平。     

Do Regulators Respond to Voluntary Pollution Control Efforts? A Count Data Analysis

This article addresses whether environmental regulators are responsive to voluntary environmental behavior. Mixed results are obtained. In two of four frequently inspected manufacturing industries, state regulators do indeed undertake fewer current inspections at those plants that report lower per unit output Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) chemical releases. Moreover, regulated pollutant releases and statutory compliance history also influence inspection activity. Finally, in the pulp and paper industry, plants that account for a larger share of state manufacturing employment are inspected less frequently. In other sectors, this appears not to be the case. (JEL K32 , L51 , Q21 )     

Economy as Instituted Process: Change,Transformation, and Progress

During the past two decades, chronic fiscal deficits have led to elevated and rising ratios of government debt to nominal GDP in Japan. Nevertheless, long-term Japanese government bonds' (JGBs) nominal yields initially declined, and have since stayed remarkably low and stable. This is contrary to the received wisdom which holds that higher government deficits and indebtedness will exert upward pressures on nominal yields. This paper examines the relationship between JGBs' nominal yields and short-term interest rates, as well as other factors, such as low inflation, persistent deflationary pressures, and tepid growth. We also argue that Japan has monetary sovereignty, which gives the Japanese government the ability to service its debt, and enables the Bank of Japan (BOJ) to keep JGBs' nominal yields low by ensuring that short-term interest rates are low, and by using various other tools of monetary policy. The argument that short-term interest rates and monetary policy are the primarily drivers of long-term interest rates follows John Maynard Keynes's (1930) insights.