Digital Commons Network^™

Targeted Enforcement Against Illicit Trade In Tobacco Products, James Prieger, Jonathan D. Kulick, Mark A. R. Kleiman

School of Public Policy Working Papers

Illicit trade in tobacco is a substantial and growing problem in the U.S., causing loss of tax revenue, damage to public health, and threats to public safety. Decisions about enforcement against ITTP involve tradeoffs among competing objectives. Good policy design can improve the terms of those tradeoffs but cannot eliminate them. We examine questions about the allocation of enforcement resources against ITTP, and its distribution across activities, individuals, and organizations: in particular, whether and how to differentially target ITTP that involves violence or support for terrorism. We consider the problem of developing effective strategies for enforcement, applying both lessons from …

The Growth Of The Broadband Internet Access Market In California: Deployment, Competition, Adoption, And Challenges For Policy, James E. Prieger

School of Public Policy Working Papers

This report examines the great progress made in availability and adoption in the broadband market over the past few decades and shows how Californian residents and businesses have come to use broadband widely. The policy issues involved with continuing the tremendous strides already made are discussed, along with recommendations for policy-makers.

The report begins by documenting the rapid growth of Internet usage in the U.S. and California. There is a review of the current state of competition in voice and broadband markets, discussing the decline of traditional telephone service, which is rapidly approaching irrelevance, and the rise of wireless and …

The Growth Of The Broadband Internet Access Market In California: Deployment, Competition, Adoption, And Challenges For Policy (Research Brief), James E. Prieger

School of Public Policy Working Papers

This report is a brief version of a longer study of the California broadband market (Paper 63). Readers interested in more background information, more empirical analysis, and more complete documentation of sources and methodology can refer to the longer report, which is available at: http://digitalcommons.pepperdine.edu/sppworkingpapers/63/.

Does Oil Hinder Democratic Development?: A Time-Series Analysis, Luisa Blanco, Kelsey J. O'Connor, Jeffrey B. Nugent

School of Public Policy Working Papers

The resource curse is a topic studied intensively in both economics and political science. Much of the focus is now on whether oil affects democratic institutions. We further the debate through the use of additional measures of democracy and multiple time-series estimation strategies. We find no robust long-run effect of oil rents per capita on Polity, Civil Liberties, or Political Rights. Many comparable studies were restricted to Polity. We also use different country and period samples to respond to the findings that the effects of oil abundance may differ in Latin America, the Middle East, in mature oil producers, or …

Cigarette Taxes And Illicit Trade In Europe, James E. Prieger, Jonathan D. Kulick

School of Public Policy Working Papers

Cigarettes are highly taxed in Europe to discourage tobacco use and to fund public-health measures to mitigate the harms from tobacco consumption. At higher prices (more precisely, at higher differentials between licit and black-market prices) consumers substitute more toward illicit cigarettes. Illicit retail trade in cigarettes (IRTC) includes counterfeiting and smuggling—either of legally purchased products, from lower-tax to higher-tax jurisdictions, or of entirely non-tax-paid cigarettes. The existing literature includes claims that taxes are not an important factor determining the scale of IRTC. We investigate these claims with data from 1999–2013 in the European Union. We find that while the simple …