Review of Industrial Organization

, Volume 7, Issue 1, pp 51–64 | Cite as

Financial aspects of motor carrier safety inspection performance

  • T. Randolph Beard
Article

Abstract

This paper investigates the empirical relationships between the safety performances and the financial conditions and management forms of a group of motor carriers. Unlike previous work, we utilize cash flow analyses and random, comprehensive roadside safety inspection results to measure financial status and safety performance, respectively, thus avoiding many criticisms of previous studies.

Several probit models are specified and estimated by the method of moments technique. The results strongly suggest that firm financial status is an important predictor of firm safety performance, that ‘closely-held’ firms exhibit substantially different behavior than other firms, that carriers respond to cargo-specific risks, and that some common safety inspection criteria seem to sensibly ‘measure’ safety.

Key words

Motor carriers safety inspections 
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Copyright information

© Kluwer Academic Publishers 1992

Authors and Affiliations

  • T. Randolph Beard
    • 1
  1. 1.Department of EconomicsAuburn UniversityAuburnU.S.A.

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