Unpaid diplomatic parking tickets as indicator of national corruption

Started by TehBorken, Oct 02 06 08:25

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TehBorken

From [font class="arttype"]"[a href="http://www.nber.org/papers/w12312"]Cultures of Corruption: Evidence From Diplomatic Parking Tickets[/a]," Ray Fisman and Edward Miguel, Columbia University and the University of California at Berkeley
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Unpaid diplomatic parking tickets as indicator of national corruption

[/font][font class="arttype"]What makes officials corrupt? Disentangling law and culture is a tricky business, but a pair of economists have come up with an ingenious way to do it: studying the frequency of parking violations committed by diplomats in New York City. Since, as their study reports, there is "essentially zero legal enforcement of diplomatic parking violations," the authors hypothesized that any cross-national variation in parking-violation rates should flow from culture alone. And sure enough, diplomats from countries with high levels of corruption were significantly more likely to incur parking tickets, suggesting that cultural factors rather than legal norms drive a great deal of official misconduct.

The worst offenders were Kuwaitis, who accumulated an astonishing 246 violations per diplomat per year from the end of 1997 through 2002, followed by Egyptians, with 140 violations per diplomat per year; countries whose diplomats [i style="font-weight: bold;"]incurred no parking tickets [/i]included Canada, Israel, Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. The study also found that officials from countries where the U.S. is less popular were much more likely to park illegally, and that there was a significant drop-off in violations after 9/11, particularly among diplomats from Muslim nations.[/font]

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The real trouble with reality is that there's no background music.

Mutilated Mind

TehBorken, at first sight I thought the title was about US officials corruption because it mentioned UNPAID parking tickets, but later on the article takes just the rate of incurred parking tickets by alien officials as an indicator for corruption in their respective countries. That's what I understand from the text.

It must be mentioned that the fact that no parking tickets at all seem to have been issued to diplomats from countries such as Sweden, Denmark, Israel and Canada doesn't prove that none SHOULD have been issued.

I may seem to be defending those heavy parking ticket offenders, but I'm not. There is no reason to presume they didn't deserve their tickets. It's only that parking attendants might - just MIGHT - tend to close an eye towards parking violations committed by officials of "friendly" countries, isn't it ?

Besides, the incidence of UNPAID parking tickets vs. paid ones might be a fairly good indicator of corruption within your country. The more so if a comparative study is done between unpaid parking tickets issued to high ranking people and officials, and those issued to ordinary people.

TehBorken

 Mutilated Mind wrote:
It must be mentioned that the fact that no parking tickets at all seem to have been issued to diplomats from countries such as Sweden, Denmark, Israel and Canada doesn't prove that none SHOULD have been issued.

Who claimed that it did?


There is no reason to presume they didn't deserve their tickets.

I'd never presume any such thing.


It's only that parking attendants might - just MIGHT - tend to close an eye towards parking violations committed by officials of "friendly" countries, isn't it ?

Anything is possible, including the chance that your assertions are correct.



The more so if a comparative study is done between unpaid parking tickets issued to high ranking people and officials, and those issued to ordinary people.

 Please feel free to conduct such a study; I'm sure it would be tremendously fascinating. But who am I to say? I'm just a lackey who's paid to post this stuff, remember?
The real trouble with reality is that there's no background music.


TehBorken

 Mutilated Mind wrote:
Exactly.

And there ya have it. I'm genuinely gratified that you finally decided to see things my way.  lol
The real trouble with reality is that there's no background music.