Have We Lost the War on Drugs? – Gary Becker and Kevin Murphy – WSJ 2013
29 Nov 2014 Leave a comment
in economics of crime, economics of regulation, Gary Becker, health economics, law and economics, liberalism
One moderate alternative to the war on drugs is to follow Portugal’s lead and decriminalize all drug use while maintaining the illegality of drug trafficking. Decriminalizing drugs implies that persons cannot be criminally punished when they are found to be in possession of small quantities of drugs that could be used for their own consumption.
Decriminalization would reduce the bloated U.S. prison population since drug users could no longer be sent to jail.
Decriminalization would make it easier for drug addicts to openly seek help from clinics and self-help groups, and it would make companies more likely to develop products and methods that address addiction…
A study published in 2010 in the British Journal of Criminology found that in Portugal since decriminalization, imprisonment on drug-related charges has gone down; drug use among young persons appears to have increased only modestly, if at all; visits to clinics that help with drug addictions and diseases from drug use have increased; and opiate-related deaths have fallen.
Richard A. Posner: Wire Trap | New Republic
27 Nov 2014 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, economics of crime, law and economics, liberalism, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA, war and peace Tags: Richard Poser, terrorism
Environmental and Urban Economics: Do Demographers Really Predict Future Population Trends Without Incorporating Women’s Economic Incentives?
26 Nov 2014 Leave a comment
in discrimination, economics of love and marriage, gender, health economics, human capital, labour economics
To my amazement, this work does not discuss how women’s potential earnings in the labor market correlates with fertility decisions.
At least in the Demography paper linked to above, the word “incentives” does not appear in the paper and nobody makes a choice based on the costs and benefits of fertility.
Without incorporating such factors, how can a statistical model yield a credible prediction?
The beginnings of justice after the liberation of the death camps
26 Nov 2014 Leave a comment
in economics of crime, laws of war, liberalism, war and peace Tags: Crime and justice, war crimes
A Burglar’s Quest | What do burglars steal these days?
24 Nov 2014 1 Comment
in economics of crime, occupational choice Tags: Burglary
When I came out of university, it must have been the golden age of burglary. A VCR would cost $1,000, which was about two weeks’ wages back then. Small televisions could be carried away. They were about a week’s wages.
In these days of dirt cheap electrical goods, a huge flatscreen TV is about $700. I don’t know what you get for that. Not much, I suppose. Second-hand electrical goods don’t go for much these days.
Mobile phones are the new cash cows for burglars and pickpockets. Even then, it costs nothing to download a security app that kills the phone in the event of theft. I’m told the life of a stolen credit card is measured in hours.
Not surprisingly, a major factor in the decline in domestic burglaries is that they are no longer profitable. Supply and demand rules.
via Security Infographic: A Burglars Quest | ASecureLife.com.
The spill-over benefits of unobservable victim precautions such as Lojack
22 Nov 2014 Leave a comment
in economics of crime, law and economics, occupational choice Tags: crime and deterrence, crime and punishment, Steven Levitt
Ian Ayres and Steven Levitt looked at the impact of Lojack – a hidden radio-transmitter device used for retrieving stolen vehicles.
There is no external indication that Lojack has been installed, so it does not directly affect the likelihood that a protected car will be stolen.
Ian Ayres and Steven Levitt attempted to measure its general deterrence effect: they found that the availability of Lojack is associated with a sharp fall in auto theft. Rates of other crime do not change appreciably. There was also a small but observable tendency for older-model cars to be stolen. presumably because these were somewhat less likely to have a Lojack transmitter.
The marginal social benefit of an additional unit of Lojack has been fifteen times greater than the marginal social cost in high crime areas. Those who install Lojack obtain less than 10 percent of the total social benefits, leading to under-provision by the market.
Institutions and Economic Performance | Timur Kuran speaks with Douglass North
22 Nov 2014 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, comparative institutional analysis, development economics, economic history, history of economic thought, law and economics, Public Choice Tags: Douglass North, Timur Kuran
Map: The most-stolen vehicle in every state
22 Nov 2014 Leave a comment
in economics of crime, law and economics Tags: economics of crime
David Friedman on the costs and benefits of prevention and adaptation to global warming
20 Nov 2014 Leave a comment
.@cgiarclimate Debate on climate change always neglect crucial role of CO2 in agriculture @ifadnews @careemergencies http://t.co/Y3Du5YnF56—
Golden Rice Now (@paulevans18) July 17, 2015
Free Market Environmentalism: Breaking the Shackles of Regulation | Terry Anderson 2013
20 Nov 2014 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, economics of regulation, environmental economics, law and economics, property rights Tags: free market environmentalism, Terry Anderson
Women graduates increasingly put their partner’s career first after they graduate | Daily Mail Online
19 Nov 2014 Leave a comment
in discrimination, economics of love and marriage, gender, human capital, labour economics, labour supply, occupational choice Tags: asymmetric marriage premium, Claudia Goldin, gender wage gap, motherhood penalty, power couples
Women are increasingly putting their husband’s career before their own, a controversial new study of Harvard Business School graduates has found.
It canvassed over 25,000 male and female students, and found 40 percent of Gen X and boomer women said their spouses’ careers took priority over theirs.
The researchers also said only about 20 percent of them had planned on their careers taking a back seat when they graduated.
This gender gap found by Robin Ely, Colleen Ammerman and Pamela Stone can be better explained by the marriage market combined with assortative mating.
1. Harvard business graduates are likely to marry each other and form power couples.
2. There tends to be an age gap between men and women in long-term relationships and marriages of say two years.
This two year age gap means that the husband as two additional years of work experience and career advancement. This is highly likely to translate into higher pay and more immediate promotional prospects.
Maximising household income would imply that the member of the household with a higher income, and greater immediate promotional prospects stay in the workforce.
It is entirely possible that women to anticipate this situation both in their subject choices and career ambitions.
Claudia Goldin found that the wage gap between male and female Harvard graduates disappears in the presence of one confounding factor.
That confounding factor is obvious: the male in the relationship earns less. When this is so, Goldin found that the female in the relationship earns pretty much as do similar male Harvard graduates, except for the fact that they work less hours per week:
We identify three proximate factors that can explain the large and rising gender gap in earnings: a modest male advantage in training prior to MBA graduation combined with rising labour market returns to such training with post-MBA experience; gender differences in career interruptions combined with large earnings losses associated with any career interruption (of six or more months); and growing gender differences in weekly hours worked with years since MBA.
Differential changes by sex in labour market activity in the period surrounding a first birth play a key role in this process. The presence of children is associated with less accumulated job experience, more career interruptions, shorter work hours, and substantial earnings declines for female but not for male MBAs.
The one exception is that an adverse impact of children on employment and earnings is not found for female MBAs with lower-earning husbands.
This sociological evidence reported in the Daily Mail is entirely consistent with the choice hypothesis and equalising differentials as the explanation for the gender wage gap. As Solomon Polachek explains:
At least in the past, getting married and having children meant one thing for men and another thing for women. Because women typically bear the brunt of child-rearing, married men with children work more over their lives than married women.
This division of labour is exacerbated by the extent to which married women are, on average, younger and less educated than their husbands.
This pattern of earnings behaviour and human capital and career investment will persist until women start pairing off with men who are the same age or younger than them.
Richard Posner on behavioural economics and its real-world applications
19 Nov 2014 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, behavioural economics, comparative institutional analysis, labour economics, occupational choice, Richard Posner Tags: behavioural economics, experimental economics, Richard Posner
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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