Four Essays on the Economics of Road Risks in India

__Abstract__ My dissertation aims at understanding the environmental and behavioral determinants of road traffic accidents in a developing country, India. To do so, a panel database on Indian states over a period going from 1996 to 2006 has been built. A household survey among drivers and passengers of motorbikes has been also implemented in Delhi in 2011, this to overcome the absence of individual data on road habits. Chapter 1 is a macroeconomic study on the Indian subcontinent. The results found suggest that India should invest more particularly in road infrastructures, in the strict implementation of road rules and in education programs on road related risks. Given that 70% of motorized vehicles are two-wheelers in India, I decided to focus the rest of my analysis on this subgroup. Chapter 2 provides a presentation of the survey. I study in Chapter 3 the adequate measurement of risk aversion in the context of a developing country. I explore the impact of questions and interviewers on the elicited individuals’ preferences towards risk. In Chapter 4, a theoretical model on the influence of risk aversion on prevention activities is first adapted to the road safety context. When looking at the data, we found thatmore risk averse drivers aremore likely to wear a helmet while there is no significant effect on choice of speed. As for passengers, they seem to adapt their helmet use to their environment and in particular to their driver’s skills. In Chapter 5, I show that previous experiences of road crash and police stop impact subjective expectations. Fear of injuries lead to a greater use of helmet on long distance journeys, while police threat rather determines the helmet use on short trips

Is Self-Reported Risk Aversion Time Varying?

We examine a Japanese Panel Survey in order to check whether self-reported risk aversion varies over time. In most panels, risk attitude variables are collected only once (found in only one survey wave), and it is assumed that self-reported risk aversion reects the individual's time-invariant component of preferences toward risk. Nonetheless, the question could be asked as to whether the financial and macro shocks a person faces over his lifetime modify his risk aversion. Our empirical analysis provides evidence that risk aversion is composed of a time-variant part and shows that the variation cannot be ascribed to measurement error or noise given that it is related to income shocks. Taking into account the fact that there are time-variant factors in risk aversion, we investigate how often it is preferable to collect the risk aversion measure in long panel surveys. Our result suggests that the best predictor of current behavior is the average of risk aversion, where risk aversion is collected every two years. It is therefore advisable for risk aversion measures to be collected every two years in long panel surveys

«Your Money or Your Life !» The Influence of Injury and Fine Expectations on Helmet Adoption among Motorcyclists in Delhi

Road mortality is a growing burden in many developing countries, although many of these crashes are preventable. Behaviors adopted by road users while traveling is one key dimension on which governments usually play to reduce road accidents, either by stressing the potential injuries or by implementing fines if individuals do not adopt safe behaviors. This paper exploits original data collected among Delhi motorcyclists in 2011. I study the influence of perceived consequences of helmet non-use on the decision whether to wear or not such protective device. I also explore the role of previous experiences in the formation of these beliefs. I find that expected injuries are correlated with helmet use on long distance trips while expectations of fiinancial sanctions are linked with helmet adoption on short distance journeys. Women react more than men to a given level of expected medical expenditures. Furthermore, poorer individuals are more likely to use a helmet for given levels of health costs and traffic fines. Simulations of policies influencing individuals' subjective expectations show that an intensification of police threat and information campaigns would increase helmet adoption among motorcyclists

The effect of becoming a legal sex worker in Senegal on health and wellbeing

Senegal is the only low-income country where prostitution is legal and regulated by a health policy. To solicit clients in public places, female sex workers need to register with a health facility and attend monthly routine health checks aiming at testing and treating sexually transmitted infections and distributing free condoms. While this policy was first introduced in 1969 to limit the spread of sexually transmitted infections, there is no evidence so far on its impact on sex workers\u27 health. The paper aims to fill this gap by exploiting a unique data set of legal and illegal Senegalese sex workers. Using propensity score matching we find that becoming a registered sex worker leads to an improvement in health but has a detrimental effect on wellbeing. Precisely, registered sex workers are found to engage in riskier and more degrading sex acts and to have less social support from their co-workers. Our results are robust to the use of a super learner to improve the specification of the propensity score and the use of entropy balancing in order to achieve covariate balance. The results are also robust to the violation of the conditional independence assumption. The results suggest that psychological services should be offered to sex workers part of the registration policy in order to overcome its negative effect on wellbeing

Socio-economic determinants of road traffic accident fatalities in low and middle income countries

In low and middle income countries road traffic accident fatalities will become in the near future one of the three major causes of death. Given that in particular the active population accounts for these fatalities, the potential economic implications are large, on the micro and the macro level. Yet, so far not much is known about the determinants and economic consequences of low road safety, in particular about the factors influencing road users’ behavior. Obviously this makes the design of interventions to prevent road traffic accidents and to care for the victims a serious challenge. The objective of this note is to summarize and review the existing knowledge on the determinants of road traffic accident fatalities, to identify the relevant research gaps in particular for low and middle income countries and to suggest ways to collect data and to conduct experiments that help to close these gaps. We also present a cross-country analysis of the determinants of road traffic accident fatalities that takes into account a wide range of potential environmental, economic and social factors

Traffic safety and norms of compliance with rules:An exploratory study

International audienceWe use a simple model of drivers' vigilance effort choice to show that drivers' propensity to follow traffic rules has two opposite effects on road safety. On the one hand, it lowers the frequency of dangerous situations. On the other hand, it also reduces drivers' vigilance effort as each driver anticipates that dangerous situations will be less frequent. These two opposite effects may lead to a non-monotonic relationship between compliance with road rules and the incidence of road traffic accidents. We present crosscountry estimates that support the existence of a bell-shaped relationship between norms of compliance with rules and traffic fatalities

Determinants of road traffic crash fatalities across Indian States

Objective: This paper explores the determinants of road traffic crash fatalities in India. As potential factors, the analysis considers, besides income, the sociodemographic populationstructure, motorization levels, road and health infrastructure and road rule enforcement. Methods: An original panel data set covering 25 Indian states is analyzed using multivariate regression analysis. Time and state fixed effects account for unobserved heterogeneity across states and time. Results: Rising motorization, urbanization and the accompanying increase in the share of vulnerable road users, i.e. pedestrians and two-wheelers, are the major drivers of road traffic crash fatalities in India. Among vulnerable road users, women form a particularly high risk group. Higher expenditure per policeman is associated with a lower fatality rate. Conclusion: The results suggest that India should focus, in particular, on road infrastructure investments that allow the separation of vulnerable from other road users, on improved road rule enforcement and should pay special attention to vulnerable female road users

Can Self-affirmation Encourage HIV-Prevention? Evidence from Female Sex Workers in Senegal

We test an intervention aiming to increase condom usage and HIV testing in a stigmatized population at high risk of contracting HIV: female sex workers (FSWs) in Senegal. Some sex work is legal in Senegal, and condoms and HIV tests are freely available to registered FSWs-but FSWs may be reluctant to get tested and use condoms, in part because doing so would entail acknowledging their risk of contracting HIV and potentially expose them to stigma. Drawing on self-affirmation theory, we hypothesized that reflecting on a source of personal pride would help participants acknowledge their risk of HIV, intend to use condoms more frequently, and take an HIV test. Prior research suggests that similar self-affirmation interventions can help people acknowledge their health risks and improve their health behavior, especially when paired with information about effectively managing their health (i.e., self-efficacy information). However, such interventions have primarily been tested in the United States and United Kingdom, and their generalizability outside of these contexts is unclear. Our high-powered experiment randomly assigned participants (N = 592 FSWs; N = 563 in the final analysis) to a self-affirmation condition or a control condition and measured their risk perceptions, whether they took condoms offered to them, and whether (after randomly receiving or not receiving self-efficacy information) they took an HIV test. We found no support for any of our hypotheses. We discuss several explanations for these null results based on the stigma attached to sex work and HIV, cross-cultural generalizability of self-affirmation interventions, and robustness of previous findings

HIV infection risk and condom use among sex workers in Senegal::evidence from the list experiment method

International audienceSocial desirability bias, which is the tendency to under-report socially undesirable health behaviours, significantly distorts information on sensitive behaviours that is gained from self-reports. As a result, self-reported condom use among high-risk populations is thought to be systematically over-reported, and it is impossible to identify the determinants of condom use. The main objective of the article is to elicit unbiased information on condom use among female sex workers (FSWs) using the double list experiment method to analyse the role of HIV infection and exposure to HIV prevention methods in condom use. More specifically, the difference in levels of condom use between HIV-positive and HIV-negative FSWs is estimated. In addition, the role of FSWs’ registration and participation in a pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) demonstration project in condom use is considered. A list experiment was designed to elicit condom use information from 786 FSWs in Senegal who were surveyed in 2015 and 2017. Using the list experiment method, participants were randomly assigned to one of two groups (treatment or control) and were asked to report the number of statements they agreed with. Respondents assigned to the control group were presented with three non-sensitive items, whereas those allocated to the treatment group were presented with the same three statements plus the sensitive item (e.g. ‘I used a condom during my last intercourse with a client’). Comparing the average number of sentences that were agreed with in both groups provides an estimation of the condom use rate in the treatment group and estimating such prevalence for several sub-groups allows the role of HIV infection risk in condom use to be identified. The percentage of FSWs using condoms in their last sexual intercourse with a client was 80% in 2015 and 78% in 2017, which was significantly lower than the 97% obtained in the face-to-face surveys in both waves. When estimating condom use among sub-groups with the list experiment method, we found that condom use among HIV-positive FSWs was only 34%, which was 47 percentage points lower than condom use among HIV-negative FSWs. We also found that registered FSWs are more likely to use condoms than clandestine FSWs. However, we did not find any difference in condom use between FSWs who were enrolled in the PrEP demonstration project and those who were not enrolled. Health policies should therefore aim to increase condom use among HIV-positive FSWs