IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ete/ceswps/ces0714.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Catching or fining speeders: a political economy approach

Author

Listed:
  • Eef Delhaye
  • Stef Proost
  • Sandra Rousseau

Abstract

According to Becker (1968) it is best to use very high fines and low inspection probabilities to deter traffic accidents because inspection is costly. This paper uses a political economy model to analyse the choice of the fine and the inspection probability. There are two lobby groups: the vulnerable road users and the ‘strong’ road users. If only vulnerable road users are effective in lobbying, we find that the expected fine is higher than if only the interests of car drivers are taken into account. When we consider the choice between inspection probability and the magnitude of the fine for a given expected fine, we find that the fine preferred by the vulnerable road users is higher than socially optimal. The reverse holds if only the car drivers are effective lobbyists. The orders of magnitude are illustrated numerically for speeding and contrasted with current fines for drunk driving in the European Union.

Suggested Citation

  • Eef Delhaye & Stef Proost & Sandra Rousseau, 2007. "Catching or fining speeders: a political economy approach," Working Papers of Department of Economics, Leuven ces0714, KU Leuven, Faculty of Economics and Business (FEB), Department of Economics, Leuven.
    • Handle: RePEc:ete:ceswps:ces0714
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://lirias.kuleuven.be/bitstream/123456789/120459/1/Dps0714.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Tscharaktschiew, Stefan, 2016. "The private (unnoticed) welfare cost of highway speeding behavior from time saving misperceptions," Economics of Transportation, Elsevier, vol. 7, pages 24-37.
    2. Tscharaktschiew, Stefan, 2020. "Why are highway speed limits really justified? An equilibrium speed choice analysis," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 138(C), pages 317-351.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Political economy; enforcement; traffic safety;
    All these keywords.

    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:ete:ceswps:ces0714. 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: library EBIB (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://feb.kuleuven.be/Economics/ .

    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.