zero tolerance policies do they inhibit or stimulate illicit drug consumption some have suggested fighting the drug problem with so called zero tolerance policies that impose stiff sanctions for possession of even trace amounts of illicit drugs such policies can swamp the criminal justice system and violate the principle that the punishment should fit the crime but these objections have often been suppressed by an overriding desire to minimize consumption this paper argues to the contrary that under plausible conditions zero tolerance policies may actually encourage controlled users to consume more not less than they would if the punishment increased in proportion to the quantity possessed at the time of arrest this result holds even if for every quantity the punishment under the proportional policy is less than or equal to that under the zero tolerance policy the argument relies on a mathematical model that describes how a typical controlled user s purchasing habits are affected by the punishment anticipated as a function of the quantity possessed a variety of possible p

rates of return to human capital a test using el salvador data most of the empirical work on human capital has been confined to conditions in developed countries this is probably due to difficulties in obtaining data for other countries it would be interesting to see how robust the theory and its associated models are in conditions regarded as typical for developing countries this will be considered here using a large data set describing the el salvador labor market two questions will be examined namely a how well does the earnings function of the human capital theory explain earnings distribution in el salvador and b does the return to training called experience here approximate the return to school as is often assumed in human capital research the latter issue is of course related to the notion of overtaking the point in the experience profile when the flat earnings stream is intersected from below by the earnings stream affected by postschool investments

alcohol consumption during prohibition we estimate the consumption of alcohol during prohibition using mortality mental health and crime statistics we find that alcohol consumption fell sharply at the beginning of prohibition to approximately 30 percent of its pre prohibition level during the next several years however alcohol consumption increased sharply to about 60 70 percent of its pre prohibition level the level of consumption was virtually the same immediately after prohibition as during the latter part of prohibition although consumption increased to approximately its pre prohibition level during the subsequent decade this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

earnings functions for the self employed comment abstract the standard human capital earnings model is applied to data from a 1975 socioeconomic survey conducted in tehran iran results show that the returns to schooling for the self employed not including street vendors canvassers and newsvendors are statistically equivalent to those of wage and salary workers thus in contradiction to conclusions drawn from a study by chiswick 1976 the high rates of return to schooling found in many studies of less developed countries do not appear to be the result of the systematic exclusion of the self employed from the estimating samples in other words when wage and salary workers are compared with the self employed in similar occupations their earnings profiles are similar

would harassing drug users work when harassed users adopt new ways of transaction supply changes in predictable ways this linkage between demand and supply can explain a number of puzzling consequences of the decriminalization of marijuana and the war on heroin and cocaine

the importance of revenue sharing for the local economic impacts of a renewable energy project a social accounting matrix approach allan g mcgregor p and swales k the importance of revenue sharing for the local economic impacts of a renewable energy project a social accounting matrix approach regional studies ambitious renewable energy targets are requiring investments in new renewable capacity in areas where acceptance could be affected by the potential economic benefits to the locality at the same time new renewable energy projects primarily for onshore wind capacity might offer a route by which peripheral economic development policies can be supported the economic impacts of these projects are difficult to quantify using input output techniques but can be more appropriately handled within a social accounting matrix sam framework a social accounting matrix for the shetland islands off the north coast of mainland scotland is used to evaluate the potential local economic and employment impacts of a large proposed onshore wind energy project sensitivity analysis reveals the relative importance of the level of commu

economic performance measurement systems for event planning and investment decision making abstract cities and destinations have assigned a strategic role in tourist and place marketing to events economic impact analyses are one of the tools that policy makers can use to support effective investment decision making in event planning the more precise and accurate these analyses are the more helpful to event planning they will be this paper proposes an innovative methodology to improve the economic impact estimate of events it combines tested action tracking technologies to track the consumer behaviour of visitors to the event radio frequency identification passive rfid with bottom up input output models a case study was carried out on the festival of economics in trento italy a cultural hallmark event aimed at high tourist flows image making and place branding and marketing the paper suggests the inclusion of accurate economic impact analyses of events in the range of instruments used by policy makers to support effective decision making and investment

returns to education a further international update and implications this paper updates evidence on the returns to investment in education by adding estimates for new countries and refining existing estimates to bring the total number of country cases to over 60 the new cross country evidence confirms and reinforces earlier patterns namely that returns are highest for primary education the general curricula the education of women and countries with the lowest per capita income the findings have important implications for directing future investment in education which for efficiency and equity purposes should concentrate on these priority areas

outmigration of u s immigrants a methodology is devised for the empirical analysis of the determinants of outmigration of immigrants in a population empirical studies in this area have been hindered by a lack of longitudinal data on the characteristics of the immigrants this problem is tackled by making use of cross sectional data at two points in time it is applied to the study of male immigrants in the united states it is found that education is positively related to the rate of outmigration for immigrants from canada asia and the pooled sample of immigrants this finding suggests that the cross sectional estimates of the growth in earnings of immigrants in the united states are underestimated for these groups of immigrants

the regional economic impacts of biofuels a review of multisectoral modelling techniques and evaluation of applications allan g j the regional economic impacts of biofuels a review of multisectoral modelling techniques and evaluation of applications regional studies the regional economic impact of biofuel production depends upon a number of interrelated factors the specific biofuels feedstock and production technology employed the sector s embeddedness in the rest of the economy through its demand for local resources and the extent to which new activity is created these issues can be analysed using multisectoral economic models some studies use input output io and social accounting matrix sam modelling frameworks whilst a nascent computable general equilibrium cge literature has begun to examine the regional impact of biofuel development this paper reviews compares and evaluates these approaches for modelling the regional economic impacts of biofuels

a theory of rational addiction we develop a theory of rational addiction in which rationality means a consistent plan to maximize utility over time strong addiction to a good requires a big effect of past consumption of the good on current consumption such powerful complementarities cause some steady states to be unstable they are an important part of our analysis because even small deviations from the consumption at an unstable steady state can lead to large cumulative rises over time in addictive consumption or to rapid falls in consumption to abstention our theory also implies that cold turkey is used to end strong addictions that addicts often go on binges that addicts respond more to permanent than to temporary changes in prices of addictive goods and that anxiety and tensions can precipitate an addiction

taking stock of the local impacts of community owned renewable energy a review and research agenda abstract a growing literature suggests that community owned renewable energy cre projects have the potential to deliver a range of environmental and local socio economic benefits there is relatively little empirical evidence to substantiate this with few systematic efforts to assess social and environmental impacts or to understand the context in which given impacts arise in this paper we review and conceptualise the local impacts commonly cited in the literature and dissect the empirical evidence currently available to support their occurrence having assessed the quality of evidence and pinpointed knowledge gaps we draw on methodological literature to identify approaches necessary to improve our understanding of the local impacts of cre and explore their patterns of occurrence we find a lack of robust survey and statistical evidence across all the seven impact categories identified of the impacts identified empowerment and access to affordable energy are found to be the least studied in addition several impacts are associated only with specific types of community energy projects we argue that the paucity of consistent evidence for direct impacts associated with the development processes and direct outcomes of projects suggests that the most substantial local impacts result from medium to long term indirect project outcomes and the investment of project revenues in the local community as such collective funding pools and negotiation processes around their distribution towards private versus public goods play a crucial role in determining transformative local impacts of cre

trade policy and the legalization of drugs a prominent suggestion in recent debate on the u s drug problem has been to legalize the use of drugs such as cocaine the debate about legalization however seems very polarized at one extreme opponents base their position on a fear that drug use would increase dramatically with consequent individual and social problems 3 13 14 at the other extreme proponents of legalization contemplate a never ending increasingly costly but inevitably futile war on drugs and see legalization as a means of both reducing the costs of policing and reducing the violence involved in the distribution of drugs legalizing cocaine would remove its profitable allure and this violent rent seeking behavior would diminish 5 there seems to be no middle ground in the debate between total prohibition and unregulated legalization an economist s solution would involve a compromise that trades off costs and benefits of legalization and taxation at the margin making the issue an empirical matter miron provides an excellent informal discussion of some of the economic issues involved 8 the public debate however and the u s position of zero tolerance clearly do not admit such tradeoffs accordingly the present paper focuses on legalization and taxation that purports to leave consumption unchanged from its prohibition levels a policy involving no tradeoffs between greater use and decreased enforcement

ex post analysis of economic impacts from wind power development in u s counties wind power development has surged in recent years in the united states policymakers and economic development practitioners to date have typically relied upon project level case studies or modeled input output estimates to assess the economic development impacts from wind power often focusing on potential local state wide or national employment or earnings impacts building on this literature we conduct an ex post econometric analysis of the county level economic development impacts of wind power installations from 2000 through 2008 in a large wind rich region in the country taking into account factors influencing wind turbine location we find an aggregate increase in county level personal income and employment of approximately 11 000 and 0 5 jobs per megawatt of wind power capacity installed over the sample period of 2000 to 2008 these estimates appear broadly consistent with modeled input output results and translate to a median increase in total county personal income and employment of 0 2 and 0 4 for counties with installed wind power over the same period

procrastination and obedience in this lecture i shall focus on situations involving repeated decisions with time inconsistent behavior although each choice may be close to maximizing and therefore result in only small losses the cumulative effect of a series of repeated errors may be quite large thus in my examples decision makers are quite close to the intelligent well informed individuals usually assumed in economic analysis but cumulatively they make seriously wrong decisions that do not occur in standard textbook economics this lecture discusses and illustrates several pathological modes of individual and group behavior procrastination in decision making undue obedience to authority membership of seemingly normal individuals in deviant cult groups and escalation of commitment to courses of action that are clearly unwise in each case individuals choose a series of current actions without fully appreciating how those actions will affect future perceptions and behavior the standard assumption of rational forwardlooking utility maximizing is violated the nonindependence of errors in decision making in the series of decisions can be explained with the concept from cognitive psychology of undue salience or vividness for example present benefits and costs may have undue salience relative to future costs

wage functions and occupational selection in a rural less developed country setting economists are just beginning to develop empirical knowledge about the basic relationships that determine the distribution of incomes and allocation of resources in the poor rural regions of the world understanding interactions between agriculture and the rest of the economy is particularly important in this context this paper empirically investigates the allocation of human resources between farm work and other jobs and the compensation received by individuals for their work in agriculture and elsewhere specifically two related tasks are undertaken in this paper 1 the estimation of wage functions and 2 the estimation of functions determining the allocation of time among occupations there have been a series of papers which estimate the earnings function using data from poor countries for examples see blaug 1974 chiswick 1977 and valdes 1971 however this study focuses not on total earnings but on the wage rates a person may earn in labor market work because the wage rate is the relevant price of time for many allocative decisions for example in dividing the work year between self employed farming and work as an employee off the farm a key price is the potential wage rate the person can earn in the labor market for discussion and evidence on this issue see sumner 1978 recently a few studies have appeared which illustrate the importance of understanding potential wage variations across individuals in less developed countries rosenzweig 1978 uses wage estimates from aggregate indian data in a model determining the impact of land reform bardhan 1979 develops wage functions from a sample survey in rural india as a step in estimating labor supply for rural households kusnic and davanzo 1980 use wage functions to impute potential incomes and to measure the full income distribution these previous studies illustrate the importance of understanding the determinants of market wages the present paper develops wage functions in more detail focusing especially on industrial differentials in many rural areas employment opportunities may be usefully categorized into 1 self employment mainly on small farms 2 work for wages on large farms and 3 work for wages in non farm industries the combination of selfemployment and work as an employee is also important in many rural areas in both rich and poor countries this paper examines the impact of personal characteristics on the choice to participate in work for wages and on the choice of industry these estimates also form a basis for studying industrial wage differentials tentative estimates of the dependence of participation on expected wages are also presented below the empirical analysis in this paper is based on a 1974 sample of five villages in central guatemala see corona 1978 and stein 1978 one village petapa is larger richer and more urban than the others it lies south of guatemala city within commuting distance of the capital the other villages are outside the capital city region the population sampled is almost exclusively ladino spanish culture as opposed to indian data are available on the earnings hours of work industry age schooling literacy and village of 1 005 male heads of households approximately one third of the sample work as both self employed farmers and hired workers and most of these men work on fincas large plantations another quarter of the sample work as self employed farmers and do no work for wages the suburban village has mostly nonagricultural workers whereas the four other villages have predominantly farmers and farm employees in received for publication june 21 1979 revision accepted for publication december 31 1980 north carolina state university research on this paper began while i was a rockefeller foundation supported post doctoral fellow in the labor and population group of the economics department of the rand corporation and continued at north carolina state university supported by the agricultural research service at rand robert newman served as my research assistant and at n c state james cochell provided able assistance i have benefited from the comments of colleagues at both institutions and from members of the labor economics workshop at the university of north carolina at chapel hill i also thank two anonymous referees for useful suggestions this is paper number 6558 of the journal series of the north carolina agricultural research service raleigh n c

the economic case against drug prohibition this paper discusses the costs and benefits of drug prohibition it offers a detailed outline of the economic consequences of drug prohibition and a systematic analysis of the relevant empirical evidence the bottom line is that a relatively free market in drugs is likely to be vastly superior to the current policy of prohibition

paradoxical effects of drug policy in a model with imperfect competition and switching costs this paper presents a stylized model of the market for hard drugs we assume that there is imperfect competition that the demand side is dominated by addicts and that the presence of switching costs leads to consumer loyalty drug policies affect the values of the parameters of the model including the degree of consumer loyalty and the static price elasticity of demand taking into account these effects it is shown that tough policies may lead to an increase in the marketing activities by suppliers and cause a long run increase in the number of addicts and total consumption

regional employment impacts of marine energy in the scottish economy a general equilibrium approach gilmartin m and allan g regional employment impacts of marine energy in the scottish economy a general equilibrium approach regional studies one aspect of the case for policy support for renewable energy developments is the wider economic benefits that are expected to be generated within scotland as with other regions of the uk there is a focus on encouraging domestically based renewable technologies this paper uses a regional computable general equilibrium framework to model the impact on the scottish economy of expenditures relating to marine energy installations the results illustrate the potential for considerable legacy effects after expenditures cease in identifying the specific sectoral expenditures with the largest impact on lifetime regional employment this approach offers important policy guidance

imperfect information specificity of schooling and rate of return migration abstract international migration is a dynamic process having moved into a country of destination a migrant may after a while decide to return to his country of origin the aggregate rate of return migration among a group of migrants is studied imperfect imformation leading to unrealized expectation of the migrants and changes in rates of return to schooling across countries over time are modelled as factors contributing towards return migration schooling is decomposed into schooling acquired before migration and after migration to take account of its specificity to the country in which it is acquired

assimilation changes in cohort quality and the earnings of immigrants this paper reexamines the empirical basis for two facts that seem to be found in most cross section studies of immigrant earnings 1 the earnings of immigrants grow rapidly as they assimilate into the united states and 2 this rapid growth leads to many immigrants overtaking the earnings of the natives within 10 15 years after immigration using the 1970 and 1980 u s censuses this paper studies the earnings growth experienced by specific immigrant cohorts during the period 1970 80 it is found that within cohort growth is significantly smaller than the growth predicted by cross section regressions for most immigrant groups this differential is consistent with the hypothesis that there has been a secular decline in the quality of immigrants admitted to the united states

is property crime caused by drug use or by drug enforcement policy the relationships among drug offenses prorperty crime and the allocation of police resources are investigated in a structural model using data from florida countries law enforcement resources are scarce and as efforts to combat drug crime increase the amount of these resources allocated to property crime is reduced this reallocation of police resources results in reduced deterrence for property crime and as a result an increase in these crimes the evidence presented suggests that rising property crimes in florida are at least partially the result of drug enforcement policy

a typology and assessment of multi sector regional economic impact models loveridge s 2004 a typology and assessment of multi sector regional economic impact models reg studies38 305 317 this paper provides a summary and critical review of the types of multi sector models with inter sectoral linkages commonly used to predict the total impact of an event plant opening closing or policy change on the regional economy the following model types are included economic base input output social accounting matrix integrated econometric input output and computable general equilibrium models appropriate uses of the various modelling approaches are presented along with some general operating principles and ethical considerations the paper concludes with directions for future research loveridge s 2004 une typologie et un bilan des modeles des impacts economiques regionaux multi sectoriels reg studies38 305 317 cet article cherche a faire le resume et la critique des typologies de modeles multi sectoriels qui ont des liens intersectoriels et dont on se sert frequemm

income and employment effects of shale gas extraction windfalls evidence from the marcellus region abstract new technologies combining hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling in oil and gas extraction are creating a sudden expansion of production residents of places where deep underground oil and gas deposits are found want to know about the broader economic social and environmental impacts of these activities that generate windfall income for some residents we first review the literature on windfall spending patterns then using the marcellus region the earliest area to be tapped using the new techniques we estimate county level employment and income effects for robustness we employ two methods using a propensity score matching approach we find no effect of fracking on income or employment a panel fixed effect regression approach suggests statistically significant employment effects in six out of seven alternative specifications but significant income effects in only one out of seven specifications in short the income spillover effects in the marcellus region appear to be minimal meaning there s little incentive at the county level to incur current or potential future costs that may be associated with this activity we conclude with some ideas on how localities might employ policies that would allow natural gas extraction to move forward benefitting landowners while establishing some financial safeguards for the broader community

early labour market experiences of second generation immigrants in sweden this article investigates second generation immigrant s early labour market performances in sweden to study their labour market success we estimate dynamic transition rate models cox type proportional hazards in a competing risk framework using register based panel data set our results reveal that parental resources affect not only second generation immigrants continuing education but also their later labour market success the study verifies that finding a job is difficult for second generation immigrants and the significant unobserved heterogeneity parameter estimate may indicate discrimination as a whole second generation immigrants have worse labour market performances compared to their native born counterparts

measuring the economic contribution of the international association conference market an irish case study conferences and meetings are a prerequisite in the modern global economy and can contribute substantially to national income and foreign exchange earnings this study assesses the economic contribution of the international association conference market to ireland and highlights key sectors that demonstrate strong multiplier effects primary conference expenditure estimates are combined with sector multipliers to determine direct indirect and induced effects across a range of monetary aggregates in ireland in 2007 total direct conference spending of 131 1 million generated 235 8 million in output 45 4 million in income 101 6 million in value added 52 0 million in imports and 9 3 million in product taxes key conference sectors are highlighted including hotels and restaurants renting services of machinery and equipment air transport and retail shopping findings also indicate the varying nature of derived economic effects over discrete time periods particularly in the post conference period overall the results demonstrate that the conference market contributed substantially to economic aggregates in ireland in 2007

drugs economics and policy drug ii let the market work there is no necessary link between drug consumption addiction and social disintegration empirical evidence suggests that a considerable share of the population has consumed illegal drugs during some period of their lives a substantial proportion of drug users have a job and home many mature out of drug consumption in their thirties most drug users are normal consumers responding systematically to relative prices after the failure of a repressive drugs policy switzerland allows cities to pursue a third way between repression and liberalization the state allows carefully screened heavy addicts to inject heroin at a nominal price while at the same time raising the cost to potential entrants the experiment has produced encouraging results the health of heroin users has improved and crime has been reduced a homogenized drugs policy in the european union would probably disallow such promising programmes bruno s frey

the price elasticity of hard drugs the case of opium in the dutch east indies 1923 1938 at the beginning of this century the dutch government controlled the opium market in the dutch east indies nowadays indonesia for several decades this state monopoly was called the opiumregie using information gathered during the opiumregie this paper estimates price elasticities of opium consumption it appears that short term price elasticities of opium use are about 0 7 long term price elasticities are about 1 0

policy scepticism and the impact of scottish higher education institutions heis on their host region accounting for regional budget constraints under devolution hermannsson k lisenkova k mcgregor p g and swales j k policy scepticism and the impact of scottish higher education institutions heis on their host region accounting for regional budget constraints under devolution regional studies a policy scepticism has emerged that challenges the results of conventional regional higher education institution hei impact analyses this paper provides a systematic critique of such scepticism while rejecting its extreme form the limiting effect of the binding public sector expenditure constraints under devolution is noted and it is shown how conventional impact analyses can be augmented to accommodate these constraints while the results suggest that conventional impact studies overestimate the expenditure impacts of heis they also demonstrate that the policy scepticism that treats these expenditure effects as irrelevant neglects some key aspects of heis in particular their export intensity