An Experimental Study of Bilateral Accidents

各种法律的规则的激励作用 事故责任一直是社会和 科学和政策辩论。 人们的兴趣尤其集中在 相对人严格责任法律的规则的威慑作用 过失或过失与共同过失。 近年来，科学家们发展了经济理论， 事故法的预测威慑作用的各种 法律的规则。 通过计量经济学验证这些模型 然而，由于缺乏相关的 数据 大多数最相关的信息都无法在 自然发生的数据源。 肖特博士和科恩豪泽博士正在调查 实验证明了双边事故理论和 责任法的行为影响。 一 双边事故是由下列行为决定的 双方（即他们选择的谨慎级别）。 司机- 行人事故也是这种现象的一部分。 的 研究人员将进行一系列实验来测试 责任的基本形式--严格责任（以 共同过失）和过失规则-影响 潜在伤害者的事故预防行为 受害者 实验将涉及35轮18种不同的 实验要求一对受试者选择 谨慎和活动水平。 在每一轮结束时 受试者损失或获得金钱，取决于他们的活动 水平，他们的谨慎标准，以及他们是否 受害者或伤害者，并承担或不承担责任。 这项研究将扩大研究人员的早期 单方事故理论研究。 单方面 事故是指只有一个因素的行为， 事故发生的可能性（即 飞机失事）。在这项研究中， 结果驳斥了一些假设存在于 关于各种责任法影响的文献。 使用 在效率的衡量标准上，过失规则优于 严格责任 这项研究的目的是看看这些 结果推广到受试者的行为， 意外实验 这项研究的结果应该是 从理论和政策角度来看， 法律与经济学交叉的重要话题。

The incentive effects of various legal rules governing liability for accidents have been the subject of both social scientific and policy debate. Interest has focused especially on the deterrent effect of a legal rule of strict liability relative to one of negligence or negligence with contributory negligence. During recent years, scientists have developed economic theories of accident law which predict the deterrent effects of various legal rules. Verification of these models by econometric techniques has been hampered, however, by a scarcity of relevant data. Much of the most relevant information is unavailable in naturally occurring data sources. Drs. Schotter and Kornhauser are investigating experimentally the theory of bilateral accidents and the behavioral implications of the liability laws governing them. A bilateral accident is one which is determined by the actions of two parties (i.e. their choice of caution levels). Motorist- pedestrian accidents exemplify this phenomenon. The investigators will perform a series of experiments to test how the basic forms of liability--strict liability (with a defense of contributory negligence) and negligence rules--affect the accident-preventing behavior of potential injurers and potential victims. The experiments will involve 35 rounds of 18 different experiments which ask a pair of subjects to choose levels of caution and levels of activity. At the end of each round subjects lose or receive money, depending on their activity level, their standard of caution, and whether or not they are victims or injurers and are or are not liable. This research will extend the investigators' earlier research on the theory of unilateral accidents. Unilateral accidents are accidents in which the actions of only one agent, the injurer, determine the probability of an accident (i.e. an airplane crash). In that research the investigators presented results refuting a number of hypotheses existing in the literature about the impacts of various liability laws. Using a measure of efficiency, a negligence rule outperformed a rule of strict liability. The aim of this research is to see if these results generalize to the behavior of subjects in bilateral accident experiments. The results of this study should be important from both a theoretical and policy perspective on a vital topic at the intersection of law and economics.