Crime Corruption: Evidence From Diplomatic Parking Tickets

Crime and corruption
Name
Institutional Affiliation
Title: Corruption, norms, and legal enforcement: Evidence from diplomatic parking tickets.
Authors: Raymond Fisman and Edward Miguel
Research questions
The paper seeks to evaluate the contributions social norms and legal enforcement provides in corruption. It achieves this by studying the behavior of diplomats and their families living in Ney York city by assessing their parking violations between November 1997 to November 2005, when immunity from prosecution applied and after its abolition in 2002.
The paper sought to answer the questions; how does the behavior of diplomats change after the introduction of law enforcement? What influence do cultural backgrounds have on diplomats’ behavior? How do different countries compare in corruption practices? What were the types of violations observed? Is there a correlation between violations by diplomats and corruption practices in their home countries?
Methodology
The authors answered the above questions by collecting data as documented by the U.S, Office of Foreign Missions in the State Department. The data analyzed included data generated from the unpaid violations that occurred between November 1997 to 2002 and those that occurred after enforcement of punishments in November 2002-November 2005. The aggregation of data was by grouping all violations conducted by diplomats from a particular country.
The authors further utilized a composite corruption index that analyzed the economic, political and social characteristics of a country in order to determine its levels of corruption represented by the sign (p = 0.97). The sample size consisted of 149 countries whose population according to the World Development Indicators had surpassed half a million people by 1998.
The process of analyzing data utilized the negative binominal model where the aggregate number of unpaid parking violations was the dependent variable and the independent variable was the names of the countries.
Conclusion
The paper observed that first; there was a correlation between the unpaid parking contraventions with the existing corruption index. For instance, Niger, considered to be among the most corrupt countries in the world, had an average of 20.2 violations per diplomat before the enforcement of regulations. Uncorrupt countries such as Norway faced no violations. Further, it observed that as the time spent in New York increased for diplomats, so did their parking violations as they became familiar with the diplomatic immunity.
Secondly, the research observed that parking violations reduced by 98 percent in the period after introduction of enforcements. Thirdly, it observed that social norms and practices in various countries influence the number of their violations. For example, countries considered poor such as African and Asian co...