After the Traffic Stops: Officer Characteristics and Enforcement Actions

This study examines the relationship between officer characteristics and racially biased policing. In particular, we explore the relationship between the officer's race/ethnicity and the nature and extent of excessive enforcement actions by race. We derive an efficient enforcement action theorem which suggests that if public safety is the sole concern of police agencies, then racially and ethnically biased policing will not be a persistent element of police practice. Alternatively, our political economic model suggests that police apply more severe sanctions against other-group drivers. Our results show that the race and ethnicity of officers have a significant and substantive impact on the intensity of enforcement actions by the Florida Highway Patrol against stopped drivers.

Did the Death of Australian Inheritance Taxes Affect Deaths?

In 1979, Australia abolished federal inheritance taxes. Using daily deaths data, we show that approximately 50 deaths were shifted from the week before the abolition to the week after. This amounts to over half of those who would have been eligible to pay the tax. Although we cannot rule out the possibility that our results are driven by misreporting, our results imply that over the very short run, the death rate may be highly elastic with respect to the inheritance tax rate.

Absorptive Capacity in R&D Joint Ventures When Basic Research Is Costly

``Absorptive capacity" – a firm's ability to assimilate information acquired from other firms – can depend on the amount of basic research it conducts. The optimal expenditures on basic research depend on its costs, and these expenditures in turn affect the amount of applied research a firm conducts to lower production costs. This paper shows that firms' expenditures on basic research can differ from the socially optimal levels, and the difference depends on the magnitude of the basic research costs and the amount of research collaboration between the firms. Policy responses that could bring firm behavior in line with that which is socially desirable are discussed as well.

The Effects of Political Action Committee Contributions on Medical Liability Legislation

This paper examines representatives' voting on the HEALTH Act of 2003, which proposed a limit on noneconomic damages in medical malpractice lawsuits. The estimates show that the more campaign contributions a representative received from law firm PACs, the less likely he or she was to vote for the bill, while money from insurance and health care industry PACs increased the likelihood of an aye vote. These effects remain after controlling for the endogeneity of campaign contributions. Other factors affecting voting decisions include party affiliation, representative ideology, whether or not the representative was an attorney, the change in state malpractice premiums and payouts, and the change in the number of doctors in the state. There is no strong evidence that the AMA's strategy of naming certain states as being in "crisis" increased the probability that representatives from those states supported the bill.

Public Complaints and Alberta's Environmental Regulation

In recent years, different levels of government in Canada and the United States have claimed that public complaints are an important source of information for the enforcement of environmental regulations. Public complaints provide monitoring at a lower cost than inspections but are inaccurate because citizens lack the information to assess a potential environmental threat properly. Little existing literature examines the use of public complaints in enforcing environmental regulations. Using a dataset of environmental reports in the province of Alberta between January 1996 and September 2002, this paper details the use of public complaints to enforce Alberta's environmental legislation and examines the effectiveness of public complaints in different industries and for different environmental threats. I find that that the majority of public complaints are simply odour complaints, and that public complaints are investigated less often over time and very rarely lead to enforcement action.

Relative Performance, Risk and Entry in the Mutual Fund Industry

This paper analyses the impact of the emergence of new funds on the portfolio decisions of mutual fund managers who are evaluated on the basis of relative performance within a dynamic model. Recent theoretical literature has pointed to the inefficiencies in portfolio selection caused by relative performance evaluation of fund managers. We find that the on-going process of creation of new funds, by posing an entry threat to the incumbent fund managers, greatly alleviates these inefficiencies. Hence the transitory market structure that characterises the mutual fund industry could explain why relative performance evaluation is widely in use.

The Impact of Digital File Sharing on the Music Industry: An Empirical Analysis

The first file-sharing software, Napster, was shut down in 2001, but the copying technology’s impact on the music industry is still passionately debated. This paper uses micro-level data from the Consumer Expenditure Survey to examine the impact of Internet file sharing on music sales. Music industry representatives argue that the practice decreases CD sales, while supporters of file-sharing allege the practice could actually increase sales. Using household-level data from the Consumer Expenditure Survey, we find support for the claim that file-sharing has decreased sales.

Corruption, Environmental Resources, and International Trade

It is shown how corruption in the management of environmental resources can give rise to a comparative advantage in environment-intensive industries. International trade, in this setting, is not necessarily welfare improving. When corruption responds endogenously to the over-exploitation of resources, it is possible for international trade to generate forces that improve resource management by reducing corruption. Therefore, in this case trade could provide gains in addition to the usual gains.

Consumption Mobility in the United States: Evidence from Two Panel Data Sets

This paper examines inequality and mobility using measures of income and consumption. Consumption is claimed to be a better measure of permanent income and thus well-being, but most studies of inequality and mobility using U.S. data use income.This paper uses cohort data from the Consumer Expenditure Surveys on total consumption to impute consumption in the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. Then, we use this imputed consumption and actual income from the PSID to examine changes in inequality and mobility. Similar to earlier findings, we show that there has been a large increase in income inequality but no concurrent increase in consumption inequality in the 1990s. Conversely, income mobility and consumption mobility are similar during this time period.Finally, we link the concepts of inequality and mobility using a social welfare function. The results suggest that income mobility and consumption mobility more than offset the increases in inequality.

The Relationship between Beer Taxes, Other Alcohol Policies, and Child Homicide Deaths

Extant research finds inverse relationships between beer taxes and physical child abuse. This study extends the direction of research by investigating the relationship between beer taxes, other alcohol policies and child homicide deaths. The homicide death count for children 0-9 years old at the state level over 1981-2002 is used as the dependent variable. Negative binomial regression models with state and year fixed effects and other control variables are estimated. Results show an inverse relationship between per gallon beer taxes and child homicide deaths (elasticity approximately -0.19), and a direct relationship between alcohol retail outlet density and child homicide deaths (elasticity approximately 0.16). Very similar results are obtained when the dependent variable is changed to be the sum of child homicide deaths and child deaths classified as being due to 'undetermined intent', and when conditional maximum likelihood Poisson models are used instead of negative binomial models.