Reducing informational asymmetry impacts choices and improves safety: An evaluation of automobile crash tests
研究评估了美国公路安全保险协会的汽车碰撞测试如何通过减少信息不对称，促使车企生产更安全的车辆，并引导消费者购买高评分车型，每年减少1650例死亡，每辆车带来至少3000美元收益。
Abstract Vehicle crash tests mitigate an informational market failure and provide substantial benefits to consumers. Consumers cannot accurately assess vehicle safety leading automakers to provide it suboptimally. Crash tests performed by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety represent an attempt to mitigate this market failure. This paper presents evidence that automakers responded by producing safer vehicles and that consumers increased purchases of highly rated vehicles. A novel identification strategy using the year of vehicle redesign is used to evaluate the tests' safety impact. A lower‐bound estimate of program benefits is $3000 per vehicle resulting in an annual reduction of 1650 fatalities.