Endogenous Driving Behavior in Tests of Racial Profiling

Jesse Kalinowski, Matthew Ross and Stephen Ross

No 28789, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: African-American motorists may adjust their driving in response to increased scrutiny by police. In daylight, when their race is more easily observable, minority motorists are the only group less likely to have fatal motor vehicle accidents. In Massachusetts and Tennessee, we find that African-Americans are the only group of stopped motorists with slower speeds in daylight. Consistent with an illustrative model, these speed shifts are concentrated at higher percentiles of the distribution. Calibration of this model indicates this behavior creates substantial bias in conventional tests of discrimination that rely on changes in the odds a stopped motorist is a minority.

JEL-codes: H11 I38 J71 J78 K14 K42 R41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-law and nep-ure
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