Smokeless tobacco, which includes both oral moist snuff and chewing tobacco, imbues substantial health risks, not limited to increased chances of oral and pancreatic cancer, gum disease, nicotine addiction, and, among adolescents, increased likelihood of smoking initiation. There is little...

This paper tests the "lock−in" effect of mortgage contract terms and establishes the link between changes in market interest rates and homeowner mobility. The analysis is based on the Panel Study of Income Dynamics during 1990−1993, when mortgage interest rates declined by almost 30...

Smoking among American adults fell by half between 1950 and 2002, yet smoking on U.S. movie screens reached historic heights in 2002, topping levels observed a half century earlier. Tobacco's comeback in movies has serious public health implications, because smoking on screen stimulates...

Between 2000 and 2006, many Minnesota communities were engaged in protracted campaigns to pass ordinances that regulated smoking. Challenges were compounded in communities where multiple cities and counties shared regulatory power within what was, for economic purposes, a single population...

Local Governance and Citizen Participation: Social Capital and Enabling Policy Environments

We examine two recent cases of relative Left success—the Battle of Seattle and Occupy Wall Street—and argue that in each case an effective dynamism between radical and reform wings drove gains. This analysis is not meant to deny political difference and hawk false unity. Instead we...

This paper develops a model of price formation in the housing market which accounts for non-random selection of those dwellings sold on the market from the stock of existing houses. The model also accounts for changes in the quality of dwellings themselves and tests for mean reversion in...