The purpose of this study was, first, to estimate of the impact of alcohol and drug use on the employment status of men and women, and second, to examine whether a history of past use, as opposed to current use, adversely affects the propensity to be employed. <p>Using data from the National...</p>

A recent nationwide survey estimated that approximately 20 million households in the United States use wood as a source of heating fuel and that about 30 percent of those use wood as their primary source of space heat.' In two studies of total wood energy consumption, the U.S. Department of...

In the 1980s, the practice of converting campaign contributions into personal income on retirement was curtailed by the Federal Elections Commission (FEC), but an exemption allowed some representatives to continue this practice. Conse quently, a natural experiment was created in which...

Labor PACs are used to explore the potential congressional influence of campaign contributions from special interest groups. PACs of organized labor are particularly useful for two reasons. First, a set of labor issues are defined each year by the AFL-CIO and so ad-hoc decisions about pertinent...

Consider a group of agents embedded in a network, repeatedly playing a game with their neighbors. Each agent acts locally but through the links of the network local decisions percolate to the entire population. Past research shows that such a system converges either to an absorbing state (a...

A large portion of our economic interactions involves a very small portion of the population. We seem to prefer familiar venues. But the tendency to focus our attention on a few individuals or activities is an attribute that is typically omitted in our characterization of markets. In markets...

Consider a simple world populated with two kinds of individuals, those who work and create wealth (peasants) and those who survive by taking the property of others (bandits). The presence of bandits creates an incentive for peasants to seek protection, to defend their property. But protection is...

Criminals impose costs on society that go beyond the direct losses suffered by their victims; crime casts a shadow of uncertainty over our daily economic and social activities. Consequently, individuals and society as a whole choose to direct resources to crime prevention. In this study we...