The purpose of this paper is to empirically estimate the propensity for alcohol-related policies to influence rates of entry into foster care and the length of time spent in foster care. Alcohol consumption is believed to be major contributing factor to child maltreatment, associated with an...

We exploit a natural experiment to estimate the causal impact of parental education on educational outcomes of their children when they are high school seniors. In 1968, the Taiwanese government extended compulsory education from 6 to 9 years and opened over 150 new junior high schools at a...

Preferences and attitudes to illicit drug policy held by individuals are likely to be an important influence in the development of illicit drug policy. Among the key factors impacting on an individual's preferences over substance use policy are their beliefs about the costs and benefits of drug...

This study examines racial, ethnic and gender differentials in physical activity. Individuals engage in physical activity during leisure-time and also during in many other activities such as walking to work, home maintenance, shopping and child care. Physical activity also occurs on the job is...

We examine the effects of fast-food restaurant advertising on television on the body composition of adolescents as measured by percentage body fat (PBF) and to assess the sensitivity of these effects to using conventional measures of youth obesity based on body-mass index (BMI). We merge...

The behavioral economic model presented in this paper argues that the effect of advertising and price differ by past consumption levels. The model predicts that advertising is more effective in reducing consumption at high past consumption levels but less effective at low past consumption...

Public policies are often made without much recourse to economic reasoning. Economists are often unaware of what is happening in the world of public affairs. As a result, both the quality of public decision-making and the role that economists play in it are less than optimal. This feature...

In economic analyses of addictive behavior, the consumption of a certain good is termed to be an addiction if an increase in past consumption of the good leads to an increase in current consumption. From policy, legal, and public health perspectives, addictive goods are of interest because the...