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Red ink in the rearview mirror: local fiscal conditions and the issuance of traffic tickets

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Author Info
Thomas A. Garrett
Gary A. Wagner

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Abstract

Municipalities have revenue motives for enforcing traffic laws in addition to public safety motives because many traffic offenses are punished via fines and the issuing municipality often retains the revenue. Anecdotal evidence supports this revenue motive. We empirically test this revenue motive using panel data on North Carolina counties. We find that significantly more tickets are issued in the year following a decline in revenue, but the issuance of traffic tickets does not decline in years following revenue increases. Our results suggest that tickets are used as a revenue generation tool rather than solely a means to increase public safety. ; Formerly titled: Are traffic tickets countercyclical?

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Paper provided by Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis in its series Working Papers with number 2006-048.

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Date of creation: 2007
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Handle: RePEc:fip:fedlwp:2006-048

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Keywords: Local government;

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  1. Oates, Wallace E, 1985. "Searching for Leviathan: An Empirical Study," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 75(4), pages 748-57, September. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  2. Polinsky, A Mitchell & Shavell, Steven, 1992. "Enforcement Costs and the Optimal Magnitude and Probability of Fines," Journal of Law & Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 35(1), pages 133-48, April.
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  3. Timothy Besley & Anne Case, 2003. "Political Institutions and Policy Choices: Evidence from the United States," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 41(1), pages 7-73, March.
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  4. James M. Poterba & Julio J. Rotemberg, 1990. "Inflation And Taxation With Optimizing Governments," NBER Working Papers 2567, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  5. Mankiw, N. Gregory, 1987. "The optimal collection of seigniorage : Theory and evidence," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 20(2), pages 327-341, September. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  6. Lave, Charles A, 1985. "Speeding, Coordination, and the 55 MPH Limit," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 75(5), pages 1159-64, December. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  7. Graves, Philip E. & Lee, Dwight R. & Sexton, Robert L., 1993. "Speed variance, enforcement, and the optimal speed limit," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 42(2-3), pages 237-243. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  8. Thomas A. Garrett, 2002. "Aggregated vs. disaggregated data in regression analysis: implications for inference," Working Papers 2002-024, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. [Downloadable!]
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