Diplomatic Parking Tickets – L’Hommedieu Summary

In their study on corruption Fisman and Miguel found a very creative way to research the effects of cultural norms and legal enforcement on corruption, specifically involving United Nations Members. The study tracked UN members’ interactions with parking enforcement in Manhattan, and they were able to yield very interesting results. The first being that UN members that come from countries with traditionally high ratings of corruption were more likely to accrue more parking tickets that their colleagues that came from traditionally less corrupt countries. There were a few other findings, that were in someways more interesting. The first being a pattern finding that the longer a UN member was found to be a member the more likely they were to acquire parking tickets. The finding I found the most interesting was their realization that there were some countries that received many parking tickets, but also paid them off, almost all the time. I thought that this might be indicative of another form of corruption in which they know what they are doing in wrong, but they simply have the funds to compensate for their intentional errors.