We study cultural norms and legal enforcement in controlling corruption by analyzing the parking behavior of United Nations officials in Manhattan. Until 2002, diplomatic immunity protected U.N. diplomats from parking enforcement actions, so diplomats ’ actions were constrained by cultural norms alone. We find a strong effect of corruption norms: diplomats from high corruption countries (based on existing survey-based indices) accumulated significantly more unpaid parking violations. In 2002, enforcement authorities acquired the right to confiscate diplomatic plates of violators. Unpaid violations dropped sharply in response. Corruption norms and (particularly in this context) legal enforcement are both important determinants of corruption.

We utilize graphical representations of Dictator Games which generate rich individual-level data. Our baseline experiment employs budget sets over feasible payoff-pairs. We test these data for consistency with utility maximization, and we recover the underlying preferences for giving (trade-offs between own payoffs and the payoffs of others). Two further experiments augment the analysis. An extensive elaboration employs three-person budget sets to distinguish preferences for giving from social preferences (trade-offs between the payoffs of others). And an intensive elaboration employs step-shaped sets to distinguish between behaviors that are compatible with well-behaved preferences and those compatible only with not well-behaved cases.

By using graphical representations of simple portfolio choice problems, we generate a very rich dataset to study behavior under uncertainty at the level of the individual subject. We test the data for consistency with the maximization hypothesis, and we estimate preferences using a two-parameter utility function based on Faruk Gul (1991). This specification provides a good interpretation of the data at the individual level and can account for the highly heterogeneous behaviors observed in the laboratory. The parameter estimates jointly describe attitudes toward risk and allow us to characterize the distribution of risk preferences in the population.

Revealing Preferences Graphically: An Old Method Gets a New Tool Kit by Syngjoo Choi, Raymond Fisman, Douglas M. Gale and Shachar Kariv. Published in volume 97, issue 2, pages 153-158 of American Economic Review, May 2007