Points To Save Lives: The Effects of Traffic Enforcement Policies on Road Fatalities

Miguel Almunia and Gonzalo Gaete
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Gonzalo Gaete: University of Warwick

CAGE Online Working Paper Series from Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE)

Abstract: Traffic accidents cause more than one million annual deaths worldwide and yield substantial economic costs to society. This paper studies the effects of a penalty points system (PPS) introduced in Spain in 2006. We find a 20% decrease in cumulative road fatalities in the five years after the reform, compared to a synthetic control group constructed using a weighted average of other European countries. Using estimates of the value of a statistical life, we calculate that the PPS yielded a net economic benefit of €4.6 billion ($6 billion) over this period, equivalent to 0.43% of Spain’s GDP.

Keywords: road fatalities; traffic enforcement; penalty points system (PPS); synthetic control; Spain. JEL Classification: I18, R41, K32. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea, nep-reg, nep-tre and nep-ure
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cge:wacage:348

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