Agency Incentives and Disparate Revenue Collection: Evidence from Chicago Parking Tickets

Author granted license

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

9-2026

ISSN

0047-2727

Publisher

Elsevier

Language

en-US

Abstract

We leverage a sharp 2012 parking fine increase for failing to purchase vehicle registration to examine disparate ticketing patterns across enforcement agencies in Chicago. Using an event-study framework, we find that Chicago police increased their enforcement of car registration non-compliance in Black relative to non-Black neighborhoods, with no observed disparate response from non-police enforcement agencies. This disparity is unexplained by compliance and is instead driven by departmental revenue incentives and multitasking-driven lower marginal search costs in Black neighborhoods. Disparate enforcement also exacerbated existing gaps in financial instability, generating increased rates of ticket non-payment and bankruptcy filings in Black neighborhoods.

This document is currently not available here.

Link to Publisher Site

Share

COinS