Alan Krueger is an economist who, in collaboration with Alexandre Mas, launched an investigation in 2003 to determine the cause of the widespread Firestone tyre blowouts.

Alan Krueger

Alexandre Mas is an economist who, alongside Alan Krueger, began an investigation in 2003 into the cause of the mysterious Firestone tyre failures.

Alexandre Mas

The investigation's critical clue was a ten-digit code printed on the sidewall of the tyres. This code provided information on the specific manufacturing plant and the week of production, enabling researchers to trace the origin of the faulty tyres.

Tyre Production Code as a Key Clue in Firestone Investigation

This node provides the citation for the 2004 research paper by Alan B. Krueger and Alexandre Mas, titled 'Strikes, Scabs, and Tread Separations: Labor Strife and the Production of Defective Bridgestone/Firestone Tires'. The article, which presented their findings on the cause of the tyre defects, was published in the *Journal of Political Economy*, Volume 112, Issue 2, pages 253–289.

Source: Krueger and Mas (2004) on Firestone Tyre Defects

An investigative team is tasked with determining the root cause of a specific model of car tyre that is failing at an unusually high rate. The team's first step is to subject a large sample of new, unused tyres of that model to a series of high-speed, high-stress endurance tests in a controlled laboratory setting. The results show that the tyres perform as expected and do not exhibit the failure mode under these conditions, leading the team to conclude that the fundamental design of the tyre is sound. 

Based on this conclusion, analyze the situation and identify two distinct categories of potential causes that the investigators should now explore. For each category, provide a brief justification explaining why it is a logical area for further inquiry.

Investigative Methodology for Product Defects

A crucial early step in the investigation by economists Krueger and Mas involved conducting high-speed stress tests on the Firestone tyres. The results of these tests confirmed that the tyres did not suffer from a fundamental design flaw, which redirected the focus of the investigation towards other potential causes like the manufacturing process.

Initial Finding: Tyre Design Not at Fault

In 2003, economists Alan Krueger and Alexandre Mas launched an investigation to solve the mystery of the exploding Firestone tyres. Their research began by ruling out a fundamental design flaw through high-speed stress tests, which then led them to analyze production data to trace the origin of the defects.

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A significant issue during the Ford-Firestone crisis was that the underlying technical reason for the frequent and deadly tyre blowouts remained a mystery, even as the recall was underway.

Unidentified Cause of Firestone Tyre Blowouts

To cite the ebook, use The CORE Econ Team 2023 The Economy 2.0: Microeconomics Open access e-text https://core-econ.org/the-economy/.

To cite a unit, use The CORE Econ Team 2023 The Economy 2.0: Microeconomics Open access e-text https://core-econ.org/the-economy/ Unit [unit number] (url).

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