Browsing by Author "Matulich, Nadia Antonette"

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    Is the law irrelevant...? : an institutional analysis of road safety outcomes
    (2022-04) Matulich, Nadia Antonette; Du Plessis, Sophia; Du Rand, Gideon; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences. Dept. of Economics.
    ENGLISH SUMMARY: This thesis aims to investigate the interaction between formal and informal institutions, and the enforcement thereof with the aim of developing an understanding of how to design holistic policy interventions that definitively change outcomes. Many governments choose to turn, primarily, to changes in laws and regulations in order to change economic outcomes. However, the field of institutional economics shows that simply considering legislation is not sufficient. Pejovich (1999) posits that it is extremely difficult to induce change if the formal institutions, or the law, and the informal institutions are not aligned, and that without appropriate accompanying changes in informal institutions and in enforcement, the law itself may be irrelevant in changing outcomes. This institutional framework is applied to consider the most appropriate policy mix for reducing road fatalities. This thesis takes Du Plessis et al. (2020a) as a starting point, which shows that South Africa seems to have ‘all the right laws’ needed to attain low road fatalities, however, outcomes remain poor, and that appropriate changes to enforcement and informal institutions are necessary. This study considers the incidence of road fatalities across the world against the backdrop of their formal institutions, enforcement, and informal institutions, so as better to understand the impact of these factors on economic outcomes. In addition to investigating enforcement, an attempt to open the ‘black box’ of informal institutions is made, to discern which attitudes and values seem to drive law abidance and road behaviour. This thesis combines data from the World Health Organisation on Road Safety, including data on road fatalities across countries, and different regulatory features within these countries, as well as data on norms, values and attitudes from the World Values Survey. Cluster analysis, principal component analysis and multiple correspondence analysis techniques, alongside ordinary least squares are employed, with the aim of exploring and understanding supplemental factors that need to be considered when employing law-making as a tool to change economic outcomes. It is found that, whilst laws still have an important role to play, it is the enforcement thereof that is of paramount importance for improving traffic fatalities. It is also found that in countries with a strong suite of vehicle safety standards, road fatalities are significantly lower than observed in countries without vehicle safety standards. Lastly, informal institutions were found to be strongly correlated with road fatalities. Notably, values associated with political and economic participation, as well as those with social liberalism are most strongly correlated with low road fatalities.