Travail de recherche/Working paper
| Résumé : | We provide a causal test for racial gaps in victimization and clearance rates, using unintentional vehicle-pedestrian crashes. The victim’s raceshould not depend on the driver’s characteristics, conditional on location and time. We find that American drivers flee 13% more often if they hitBlack pedestrians, and their clearance rates are 11% lower. This provides rare evidence of racial discrimination by the public in a high-stakes environment.These gaps correlate, suggesting statistical discrimination as a mechanism and underlining the importance of closing the racial gapin clearance rates, especially in poorer non-Black neighborhoods. Tastebased discrimination is arguably also at play. |
