Pay-as-you-speed: Two Field Experiments on Controlling Adverse Selection and Moral Hazard in Traffic Insurance

Around one million people are killed world wide every year in road-traffic accidents. The risks and consequences of accidents increase progressively with speed, which ultimately is determined by the individual driver. The behaviour of the motorist thus affects both her own and other peoples safety. Internalisation of external costs of road transport has hitherto been focused on distance-based taxes or insurance premiums. While these means, as they are designed today, may affect driven distance, they have no influence on driving behaviour. This paper argues that by linking on-board positioning systems to insurance premiums it is possible to reward careful driving and get drivers to self select into different risk categories depending on their compliance to speed limits. We report two economic field experiments that have tested ways to induce car-owners to have technical platforms installed in their vehicle in order to affect the extent of speeding. It is demonstrated that a bonus to remunerate those that have the device installed, tantamount to a lower insurance premium, increases drivers?propensity to accept the technical devices. In a second experiment the size of the bonus is made dependent on the actual frequency of speeding. We find that this is a second way to discipline users to drive at legal speeds.Traffic safety, impure public goods, moral hazard, adverse selection, self selection

Co-variation between climate signals and breeding phenology of high-arctic breeding kittiwakes (Rissa tridactyla)

Climate changes in the Arctic may have important consequences for the breeding of Arctic birds, though few studies are available to evaluate the possible effects. I studied the breeding phenology of kittiwakes (Rissa tridactyla) breeding at two colonies (Krykkjefjellet and Ossian Sarsfjellet) in Kongsfjorden, Svalbard (79°N). Eleven years of data (in the period 1970-2001) from Krykkjefjellet showed no long-term temporal trend in the timing of hatching. The spread of the median hatching date among the years was 14 days. The median hatching date was negatively correlated with the local average April ambient temperature. Correlation analysis with large-scale climate indices showed that the time of hatching was negatively correlated with the Scandinavia index in late winter (February and March), and slightly (but not statistically significantly) negatively correlated with the NAO (North Atlantic Oscillation) winter-index. A similar analysis of the number of breeding kittiwakes in study plots at Ossian Sarsfjellet showed a positive correlation between the number of breeders and average local March temperatures. These observations indicate that the kittiwakes may be able to adjust their spring arrival and breeding phenology to local or large-scale climate variations.key words: climate change, Svalbard, kittiwake, breeding phenology, North Atlantic Oscillatio

Talvea saarella nimettömällä

Lyhennysotteita Fridtjof Nansen'in teoksesta "Pohjan pimeillä perillä"

Multimethod latent class analysis

Correct and, hence, valid classifications of individuals are of high importance in the social sciences as these classifications are the basis for diagnoses and/or the assignment to a treatment. The via regia to inspect the validity of psychological ratings is the multitrait-multimethod (MTMM) approach. First, a latent variable model for the analysis of rater agreement (latent rater agreement model) will be presented that allows for the analysis of convergent validity between different measurement approaches (e.g., raters). Models of rater agreement are transferred to the level of latent variables. Second, the latent rater agreement model will be extended to a more informative MTMM latent class model. This model allows for estimating (i) the convergence of ratings, (ii) method biases in terms of differential latent distributions of raters and differential associations of categorizations within raters (specific rater bias), and (iii) the distinguishability of categories indicating if categories are satisfyingly distinct from each other. Finally, an empirical application is presented to exemplify the interpretation of the MTMM latent class model

Proton transfer pathways in an aspartate-water cluster sampled by a network of discrete states

Proton transfer reactions are complex transitions due to the size and flexibility of the hydrogen-bonded networks along which the protons may “hop”. The combination of molecular dynamics based sampling of water positions and orientations with direct sampling of proton positions is an efficient way to capture the interplay of these degrees of freedom in a transition network. The energetically most favourable pathway in the proton transfer network computed for an aspartate-water cluster shows the pre-orientation of water molecules and aspartate side chains to be a pre-requisite for the subsequent concerted proton transfer to the product state