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

Risk aversion and HIV/AIDS: Evidence from Senegalese female sex workers

HIV/AIDS is the second cause of mortality globally and there are 5000 new infections each day. Globally, sex workers are 13 times more at risk of HIV than the general population and in Senegal they have an HIV prevalence 16.5 times greater. Therefore, it is urgent to encourage behaviour change, which requires a better understanding of the reasons why sex workers engage in risky behaviours. We provide new evidence of the role of risk preferences on sexual behaviours, health behaviours and health outcomes of 600 female sex workers in Senegal in July and August 2017. We measure risk aversion of sex workers using an incentivised Gneezy and Potters task in addition to specific risk-taking scales in four domains (in general, finance, health and sex). Understanding of the experimental task was high despite low literacy level of participants. Using ordinary least squares, we find that risk aversion is an important predictor of sex workers' sexual behaviours. We find that sex workers with higher level of risk aversion have less sex acts with clients, have less clients at risk of HIV, are more likely to engage in protected sex acts and as a result earn less money per sex act. Furthermore, we find that sex workers exhibiting higher level of risk aversion are less likely to be infected with sexually transmitted infections. Results highlight that some associations between risk preferences and sexual and health behaviours are domain specific. To conclude, our results confirm the role of risk preferences in the spread of HIV/AIDS epidemic and suggest the importance of collecting information on self-reported risk aversion to identify individuals who are at a greater risk of HIV/AIDS. Finally, our results provide some rationale in using lottery-based financial incentives to prevent sexually transmitted infections and HIV/AIDS among high-risk populations

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

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

Quasi-doubly periodic solutions to a generalized Lame equation

We consider the algebraic form of a generalized Lame equation with five free parameters. By introducing a generalization of Jacobi's elliptic functions we transform this equation to a 1-dim time-independent Schroedinger equation with (quasi-doubly) periodic potential. We show that only for a finite set of integral values for the five parameters quasi-doubly periodic eigenfunctions expressible in terms of generalized Jacobi functions exist. For this purpose we also establish a relation to the generalized Ince equation.Comment: 15 pages,1 table, accepted for publication in Journal of Physics

Trading HIV for sheep: Risky sexual behavior and the response of female sex workers to Tabaski in Senegal

We use a cohort of female sex workers (FSWs) in Senegal to show how large anticipated economic shocks lead to increased risky sexual behavior. Exploiting the exogenous timing of interviews, we study the effect of Tabaski, the most important Islamic festival celebrated in Senegal, in which most households purchase an expensive animal for sacrifice. Condom use, measured robustly via the list experiment, falls by between 27.3 percentage points (pp) (65.5%) and 43.1 pp (22.7%) in the 9 days before Tabaski, or a maximum of 49.5 pp (76%) in the 7 day period preceding Tabaski. The evidence suggests the economic pressures from Tabaski are key to driving the behavior change observed through the price premium for condomless sex. Those most exposed to the economic pressure from Tabaski were unlikely to be using condoms at all in the week before the festival. Our findings show that Tabaski leads to increased risky behaviors for FSWs, a key population at high risk of HIV infection, for at least 1 week every year and has implications for FSWs in all countries celebrating Tabaski or similar festivals. Because of the scale, frequency, and size of the behavioral response to shocks of this type, policy should be carefully designed to protect vulnerable women against anticipated shocks

Exact solutions for a class of integrable Henon-Heiles-type systems

We study the exact solutions of a class of integrable Henon-Heiles-type systems (according to the analysis of Bountis et al. (1982)). These solutions are expressed in terms of two-dimensional Kleinian functions. Special periodic solutions are expressed in terms of the well-known Weierstrass function. We extend some of our results to a generalized Henon-Heiles-type system with n+1 degrees of freedom.Comment: RevTeX4-1, 13 pages, Submitted to J. Math. Phy

Elliptic Solitons and Groebner Bases

We consider the solution of spectral problems with elliptic coefficients in the framework of the Hermite ansatz. We show that the search for exactly solvable potentials and their spectral characteristics is reduced to a system of polynomial equations solvable by the Gr\"obner bases method and others. New integrable potentials and corresponding solutions of the Sawada-Kotera, Kaup-Kupershmidt, Boussinesq equations and others are found.Comment: 18 pages, no figures, LaTeX'2

Closed geodesics and billiards on quadrics related to elliptic KdV solutions

We consider algebraic geometrical properties of the integrable billiard on a quadric Q with elastic impacts along another quadric confocal to Q. These properties are in sharp contrast with those of the ellipsoidal Birkhoff billiards. Namely, generic complex invariant manifolds are not Abelian varieties, and the billiard map is no more algebraic. A Poncelet-like theorem for such system is known. We give explicit sufficient conditions both for closed geodesics and periodic billiard orbits on Q and discuss their relation with the elliptic KdV solutions and elliptic Calogero systemComment: 23 pages, Latex, 1 figure Postscrip

Gravity duals for the Coulomb branch of marginally deformed N=4 Yang-Mills

Supergravity backgrounds dual to a class of exactly marginal deformations of N supersymmetric Yang-Mills can be constructed through an SL(2,R) sequence of T-dualities and coordinate shifts. We apply this transformation to multicenter solutions and derive supergravity backgrounds describing the Coulomb branch of N=1 theories at strong 't Hooft coupling as marginal deformations of N=4 Yang-Mills. For concreteness we concentrate to cases with an SO(4)xSO(2) symmetry preserved by continuous distributions of D3-branes on a disc and on a three-dimensional spherical shell. We compute the expectation value of the Wilson loop operator and confirm the Coulombic behaviour of the heavy quark-antiquark potential in the conformal case. When the vev is turned on we find situations where a complete screening of the potential arises, as well as a confining regime where a linear or a logarithmic potential prevails depending on the ratio of the quark-antiquark separation to the typical vev scale. The spectra of massless excitations on these backgrounds are analyzed by turning the associated differential equations into Schrodinger problems. We find explicit solutions taking into account the entire tower of states related to the reduction of type-IIB supergravity to five dimensions, and hence we go beyond the s-wave approximation that has been considered before for the undeformed case. Arbitrary values of the deformation parameter give rise to the Heun differential equation and the related Inozemtsev integrable system, via a non-standard trigonometric limit as we explicitly demonstrate.Comment: 43 pages, Latex, 2 figures. v2: References added. v3: small typos corrected, published versio