Diplomats Turned Parking Into Corruption

In 2007, economists Raymond Fisman and Edward Miguel studied unpaid parking tickets by United Nations diplomats in Manhattan as a real-world measure of corruption when enforcement was weak. Until November 2002, diplomatic immunity largely protected UN diplomats from punishment for unpaid parking violations, and diplomats accumulated more than 150,000 unpaid tickets worth over $18 million. The study found that diplomats from high-corruption countries collected significantly more unpaid violations than diplomats from low-corruption countries. After New York City gained the power to strip diplomatic plates from repeat violators in 2002, unpaid violations dropped sharply.

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