IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ahy/wpaper/wp37.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Born to Hit and Run? Rugged Individualism, justice quality and non-stopping after traffic collisions in the U.S

Author

Listed:
  • Daria Denti

    (Gran Sasso Science Institute)

  • Marco Modica

    (Gran Sasso Science Institute)

Abstract

Justice quality influence on premeditated violent crimes is widely acknowledged, however little is known on its effect on Hit&Run (H&R) accidents, which are involuntary crimes in the first stage (the “Hit†) while becoming voluntary in the second stage (the “Run†). This paper provides a quantitative estimation of the effect of justice quality on H&R accidents in the U.S, where they generate high socioeconomic and emotional cost. We exploit a unique micro-regional database for U.S. counties for 2010-2018 and an instrumental variable model which draws on the Durkheimian role of individualism in shaping the evolution of institutions. We find that higher quality of justice, induced by historical and persistent individualism, has a substantial signaling effect capable of deterring H&R. Results are supported by several robustness checks, including testing alternative measures for justice quality to account for its composite dimensions.

Suggested Citation

  • Daria Denti & Marco Modica, 2022. "Born to Hit and Run? Rugged Individualism, justice quality and non-stopping after traffic collisions in the U.S," Discussion Paper series in Regional Science & Economic Geography 2022-11, Gran Sasso Science Institute, Social Sciences, revised Oct 2024.
    • Handle: RePEc:ahy:wpaper:wp37
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.gssi.it/images/discussion%20papers%20rseg/DPRSEG_2022_11.pdf
    File Function: First version, 2020
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Hit&Run; justice quality; institutions; individualism; American frontier;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D02 - Microeconomics - - General - - - Institutions: Design, Formation, Operations, and Impact
    • D64 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Altruism; Philanthropy; Intergenerational Transfers
    • D91 - Microeconomics - - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics - - - Role and Effects of Psychological, Emotional, Social, and Cognitive Factors on Decision Making
    • K14 - Law and Economics - - Basic Areas of Law - - - Criminal Law
    • N91 - Economic History - - Regional and Urban History - - - U.S.; Canada: Pre-1913

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ahy:wpaper:wp37. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Andrea Ascani (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ssgssit.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.