• DOI:10.1086/318603
Corpus ID: 15319269

Racial Bias in Motor Vehicle Searches: Theory and Evidence

@article{Knowles2001RacialBI,
  title={Racial Bias in Motor Vehicle Searches: Theory and Evidence},
  author={J. Knowles and N. Persico and P. Todd},
  journal={Journal of Political Economy},
  year={2001},
  volume={109},
  pages={203 - 229}
}

• J. Knowles, N. Persico, P. Todd
• Published 2001
• Psychology
• Journal of Political Economy

Police checking for illegal drugs are much more likely to search the vehicles of African‐American motorists than those of white motorists. This paper develops a model of police and motorist behavior that suggests an empirical test for distinguishing whether this disparity is due to racial prejudice or to the police’s objective to maximize arrests. When applied to vehicle search data from Maryland, our test results are consistent with the hypothesis of no racial prejudice against African… Expand

View on U of Chicago

nber.org

Save to Library

Create Alert

Cite

Launch Research Feed