Rebollo-Sanz, Yolanda F.Rodríguez-López, JesúsRodríguez-Planas, Núria2025-07-112025-07-112021Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization Volume 190, October 2021, Pages 408-43310.1016/j.jebo.2021.08.007https://hdl.handle.net/10433/24413Financial support from MINECO of Spain through projects ECO2016-76818, PID2019-104452RB-I00 (Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación), and from Junta de Andalucía through project SEJ-1512 and Project P18-RT-2135 (FEDER), UPO-1263503 (FEDER) is acknowledged. The authors declare that no competing interests exist. Funding for open access publishing: Universidad Pablo de Olavide/CBUAWe use three complementary quasi-experimental approaches to study the causal effect of introducing a penalty-point system (PPS) in Spain in July 1 2006, on drivers' behavior. According to Regression-Discontinuity (RD) estimates, the PPS decreased the number of traffic offenders by 14%, and this deterrence effect was directly related to the severity of the penalty. Concerns that RD estimates may over- or under-state the longer-run effects of the policy change are addressed by presenting the Difference-in-Differences (DiD) estimates, which reveal that the deterrence effect of this reform increased over time. Crucially, the reform also curbed accidents by 14%, injuries by 16%, and fatalities by 14%, and these effects persisted over time. Difference-in-RD estimates are consistent with the other two approaches. Altogether, the reform represented net benefits of over 946 million EUR per year (or 0.09% of the Spanish GDP) during the first three years after implementation.application/pdfenAttribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 Internationalhttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/Regulation and drivers behaviorIncentivesPublic policy impactsDeterrence effectjournal articleopen access