Inelasticity, Illegality and Public Policy

Tyler Cowen points us to the forthcoming JPE paper by Becker, Grossman, and Murphy that examines how public policy toward illegal goods depends on the elasticity of demand for that good.

Using the same logic of this analysis to the issue of terrorism, Chris Coyne and I have raised doubts abouts the effectiveness of US policy in the post 9/11 world.

Comments

[Gabriel Mihalache]

Many will answer you that if the fight it thought that's not always a good enough reason to give up, and secondly, that these "crimes" are not perfectly inelastic so you just need to push harder.

As for myself, I'm not sure that any strategy is obvious once confronted with this fact (the inelasticity). I wouldn't be surprised if the same findings would be used for more violations of rights.

[Gabriel Mihalache]

Above, it should be "the fight is tough". Sorry ;-)
I was also talking about the case of drugs. Re: terrorism I think that you case is even stronger but still unlikely to change minds.

[benny]

at least the terrorism example should make people angry like "but we have to do something against those evil villains" or "but they attacked our nation, we have to take revenge".

i guess its hard for most social science acknowledgements to be widely accepted by the public. most only state "as if you can look in our brains, go away ivory tower scientists and let me pull the trigger"...

[Rafe Champion]

On the analysis of the war on drugs and the case for limited deregulation, see a book by MacCoun and Reuter which I have reviewed on Amazon, the second book on this list of 55. Reuter took an economics degree in Australia before he moved to the US.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/cdp/member-reviews/ACL845LEHNC7/ref=cm_pdp_about_see_review/104-8997286-7280756