Stay or Flee? Probability Versus Severity of Punishment in Hit-And-Run Accidents

Stefano Castriota and Mirco Tonin

No 7907, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: The empirical literature testing the economic theory of crime has extensively studied the relative importance of the probability and the severity of punishment with reference to planned criminal activities. There are, however, also unplanned crimes and in this paper we focus on a very serious and widespread one, hit-and-run road accidents. In fact, it is not only unplanned, but also largely committed by citizens without criminal records and the decision whether to stay or run must be taken within a few seconds. Using Italian data for the period 1996-2016, we rely on daylight as an exogenous source of variation affecting the probability of apprehension and find that the likelihood of hit-and-run conditional on an accident taking place increases by around 20% with darkness. Relying on two legislative reforms which increased the penalties in case of hit-and-run, we find no significant effect on drivers’ behavior. Our results show that criminal activities in unplanned circumstances and under intense time pressure and emotional distress are deterred more by the certainty rather than the severity of legal sanctions.

Keywords: crime; hit-and-run; road; accidents; punishment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D91 K14 K42 R41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-law
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Stay or Flee? Probability versus Severity of Punishment in Hit-and-run Accidents (2019)
Working Paper: Stay or Flee? Probability versus Severity of Punishment in Hit-And-Run Accidents (2019)
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