We confirm the negative relationship between traffic flow (congestion) and injury severity of PTWs casualties. This is clearly identified, at least for motorcycle casualties, although moped casualties present similar impacts as well. As a result, alleviating congestion through PTWs promotion turns out to be a trade-off between congestion and safety that public officers must consider. The article also highlights the need of awareness campaigns and safety policies focused on specific groups of drivers. Attention should also be given to the enforcement of speed limits and alcohol restrictions in Barcelona.

No abstract

Public authorities and road users alike are increasingly concerned by recent trends in road safety outcomes in Barcelona, which is the European city with the highest number of registered Powered Two-Wheel (PTW) vehicles per inhabitant. In this study we explore the determinants of motorcycle and moped accident severity in a large urban area, drawing on Barcelona's local police database (2002)(2003)(2004)(2005)(2006)(2007)(2008). We apply non-parametric regression techniques to characterize PTW accidents and parametric methods to investigate the factors influencing their severity. Our results show that PTW accident victims are more vulnerable, showing greater degrees of accident severity, than other traffic victims. Speed violations and alcohol consumption provide the worst health outcomes. Demographic and environment-related risk factors, in addition to helmet use, play an important role in determining accident severity. Thus, this study furthers our understanding of the most vulnerable vehicle types, while our results have direct implications for local policy makers in their fight to reduce the severity of PTW accidents in large urban areas.

Entry regulations a¤ecting professional services such as pharmacies are common practice in many European countries. We assess the impact of entry regulations on pro…ts estimating a structural model of entry using the information provided by a policy experiment. We use the case of di¤erent regional policies governing the opening of new pharmacies in Spain to show that structural models of entry ought to be estimated with data from policy experiments to pin down how entry regulations change payo¤s functions of the incumbents. Contrary to the public interest rationales, regulations are not boosting only small town pharmacies payo¤s nor increasing all pharmacies payo¤s alike. The gains from regulations are very unevenly distributed, suggesting that private interests are shaping the current mix of entry and markup regulations.

Concerns on the clustering of retail industries and professional services in main streets had traditionally been the public interest rationale for supporting distance regulations. Although many geographic restrictions have been suppressed, deregulation has hinged mostly upon the theory results on the natural tendency of outlets to differentiate spatially. Empirical evidence has so far offered mixed results. Using the case of deregulation of pharmacy establishment in a region of Spain, we empirically show how pharmacy locations scatter, and that there is not rationale for distance regulation apart from the underlying private interest of very few incumbents. JEL Codes: L51; K23; H42.