科学研究

Nathan Schiff is an associate professor at Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, School of Economics. His work spans the fields of urban economics, industrial organization, and public economics, with a general focus on how geography affects competition and the characteristics of markets. Some of his papers have been published in the Journal of Political Economy, American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, and the Journal of Urban Economics. 

Police departments issue fines for minor public safety violations, such as traffic tickets for speeding, to deter unlawful behavior. However, these fines and associated court fees can also generate significant revenue for the local government, raising the concern that policing is being used for revenue generation rather than public safety. This issue of “policing for profit” is particularly salient in the U.S., where many small municipalities operate their own police departments and courts. In this paper, we study the issue of policing and revenue generation in the state of Missouri, before and after the fatal shooting of Michael Brown by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri in August 2014. This event, and the resulting investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), brought widespread attention to the role of revenue generation in both policing and municipal court practices. Moreover, the DOJ report suggested that these practices disproportionately harmed Black residents. Subsequently, Missouri implemented several reforms to discourage “policing for profit.” We use detailed data on municipal court finances and municipal policing to evaluate the effects of these reforms. In particular, we study the impact on the overall level of policing activity, police actions by race of resident, and local government revenues. Our study aims to explain which reforms were most effective and what underlying mechanisms led to the documented responses in policing.