Luck or luxury? Possible corruption in the car registration process in the Czech Republic

Research into the detection of fraud and corruption has brought many new insights in recent decades, partly thanks to a decrease in the costs of data collection and processing. However, access to data often remains an issue, especially when fraud or corruption seems to be present. This article applies a simple detection method focussing on possible manipulations in the car registration process in the Czech Republic, where car registration plates are allegedly assigned in random order. As access to official data was denied, we collected data in the field for a random sample of 5,000 cars, and used this to examine the existence of statistical relationships between the cars’ estimated price at registration and their registration plate numbers. The results show that cars with intuitively appealing registration plates are on average significantly more expensive than other cars. Moreover, this price difference corresponds to the relative scarcity of the given type of registration plate number, which could be a sign of discretionary behaviour in the allocation of such plates.