Philip J. Cook

Robert Frank

Disney chairman Michael Eisner topped the 1993 Business Week chart of America's highest-paid executives, his $203 million in earnings roughly 10,000 times that of the lowest paid Disney employee. During the last two decades, the top one percent of U.S. earners captured more than 40 percent of the country's total earnings growth, one of the largest shifts any society has endured without a revolution or military defeat. Robert H. Frank and Philip J. Cook argue that behind this shift lies the spread of "winner-take-all markets"—markets in which small differences in performance give rise to enormous differences in reward. Long familiar in sports and entertainment, this payoff pattern has increasingly permeated law, finance, fashion, publishing, and other fields. The result: in addition to the growing gap between rich and poor, we see important professions like teaching and engineering in aching need of more talent. This relentless emphasis on coming out on top—the best-selling book, the blockbuster film, the Super Bowl winner—has molded our discourse in ways that many find deeply troubling.

Why the Few at the Top Get So Much More Than the Rest of Us

The Winner-Take-All Society

Jens Ludwig

Compared with other developed nations, the United States is unique in its high rates of both gun ownership and murder. Although widespread gun ownership does not have much effect on the overall crime rate, gun use does make criminal violence more lethal and has a unique capacity to terrorize the public. Gun crime accounts for most of the costs of gun violence in the United States, which are on the order of $100 billion per year. But that is not the whole story. Guns also provide recreational benefits and sometimes are used virtuously in fending off or forestalling criminal attacks. Given that guns may be used for both good and ill, the goal of gun policy in the United States has been to reduce the flow of guns to the highest-risk groups while preserving access for most people. There is no lack of opinions on policies to regulate gun commerce, possession, and use, and most policy proposals spark intense controversy. Whether the current system achieves the proper balance between preserving access and preventing misuse remains the subject of considerable debate. Evaluating Gun Policy provides guidance for a pragmatic approach to gun policy using good empirical research to help resolve conflicting assertions about the effects of guns, gun control, and law enforcement. The chapters in this volume do not conform neatly to the claims of any one political position. The book is divided into five parts. In the first section, contributors analyze the connections between rates of gun ownership and two outcomes of particular interest to society—suicide and burglary. Regulating ownership is the focus of the second section, where contributors investigate the consequences a large-scale combined gun ban and buy-back program in Australia, as well as the impact of state laws that prohibit gun ownership to those with histories of domestic violence. The third section focuses on efforts to restrict gun carrying and includes a critical examination of efforts in Pittsburgh to patrol illegal gun traffic and a re-examination of the effects of permissive state gun-carrying laws. This section also features the first rigorous—and critical—analysis of Richmond's Project Exile, which serves as one model for the national Project Safe Neighborhoods program. The fourth section focuses on efforts to facilitate research on gun violence, including a database on state gun laws and the ongoing development of a nationwide violent-death reporting system. The book concludes with an examination of the policy process. Differences in opinion about gun policy flourish partly because of the lack of sound evidence in this area. The contributors to this volume demonstrate that skilled and dispassionate analysis of the evidence is attainable, even in an area as contentious as firearm policy. For pragmatists who wish to reduce the social burden of gun violence, there is no acceptable alternative.

Effects on Crime and Violence

Evaluating Gun Policy

Olivier Marie

Giovanni Mastrobuoni

Stephen Machin

Reporting on research in the United States, Europe, and South America, this book discusses such topics as a cost-benefit analysis of additional police hiring, the testing of innovative policy interventions through field experiments, imprisonment and recidivism rates, incentives and disincentives for sports hooliganism and much more.

What Reduces Offending?

Lessons from the Economics of Crime

Vice

'...four chapters alone are worth the price of the volume and are recommended to serious researchers in the area of violent crime and delinquency.' -- Contemporary Psychology, Vol 28 No 6, 1983 'The collection provides a highly useful anthology of current research into the parameters of criminally violent behavior, including a wide selection of viewpoints.' -- The Police Chief, January 1984

Criminal Violence

What drug provides Americans with the greatest pleasure and the greatest pain? The answer, hands down, is alcohol. The pain comes not only from drunk driving and lost lives but also addiction, family strife, crime, violence, poor health, and squandered human potential. Young and old, drinkers and abstainers alike, all are affected. Every American is paying for alcohol abuse. Paying the Tab, the first comprehensive analysis of this complex policy issue, calls for broadening our approach to curbing destructive drinking. Over the last few decades, efforts to reduce the societal costs--curbing youth drinking and cracking down on drunk driving--have been somewhat effective, but woefully incomplete. In fact, American policymakers have ignored the influence of the supply side of the equation. Beer and liquor are far cheaper and more readily available today than in the 1950s and 1960s. Philip Cook's well-researched and engaging account chronicles the history of our attempts to "legislate morality," the overlooked lessons from Prohibition, and the rise of Alcoholics Anonymous. He provides a thorough account of the scientific evidence that has accumulated over the last twenty-five years of economic and public-health research, which demonstrates that higher alcohol excise taxes and other supply restrictions are effective and underutilized policy tools that can cut abuse while preserving the pleasures of moderate consumption. Paying the Tab makes a powerful case for a policy course correction. Alcohol is too cheap, and it's costing all of us.

The Costs and Benefits of Alcohol Control

Paying the Tab

Charles T. Clotfelter

Looks at the history of state lotteries, discusses whether lotteries are ethical and assesses their effectiveness as a source of government funding

State Lotteries in America

Selling Hope

Research from the United States, Europe, and South America demonstrates the usefulness of the tools of economic analysis for the study of crime. Economists who bring the tools of economic analysis to bear on the study of crime and crime prevention contribute to current debates a normative framework and sophisticated quantitative methods for evaluating policy, the idea of criminal behavior as rational choice, and the connection of individual choices to aggregate outcomes. The contributors to this volume draw on all three of these approaches in their investigations and discuss the policy implications of their findings. Reporting on research in the United States, Europe, and South America, the chapters discuss such topics as a cost-benefit analysis of additional police hiring, the testing of innovative policy interventions through field experiments, imprisonment and recidivism rates, incentives and disincentives for sports hooliganism (“hooliganomics”), data showing the influence of organized crime on the quality of local politicians, and the (scant) empirical evidence for the effect of immigration on crime. These contributions demonstrate the eclectic approach of economists studying crime as well as their increasing respect for the contributions of other social scientists in this area. Contributors Brian Bell, Paolo Buonanno, Philip J. Cook, John J. Donohue III, Jeffrey R. Kling, Jens Ludwig, Stephen Machin, Olivier Marie, Giovanni Mastrobuoni, Sendhil Mullainathan, Aurélie Ouss, Emily Greene Owens, Stefan Pichler, Paolo Pinotti, Mikael Priks, Daniel Römer, Rodrigo R. Soares, Igor Viveiros

Philip J. Cook

About

Books

Join the club