Anton D. Lowenberg’s research while affiliated with California State University, Northridge and other places

The impact of the COVID pandemic on the 2020 election outcome is analyzed using Iowa Electronic Market data, measures of socially and economically driven market volatility, a measure of COVID severity, and selected election-related events. Building on research regarding two previous U.S. presidential elections, we find that the pandemic helped the incumbent in two ways. The largest impact supporting the incumbent came from the apparent medical severity. A secondary impact came from social and economic volatility with the surprising finding that both risks helped the incumbent relative to the challenger. However, these impacts were not adequate to overcome the relatively large advantage of the challenger.

Reviews and summarizes different public choice approaches used in the literature to study International Sanctions

Objectives The contentious 2016 U.S. presidential election was marked by acrimonious televised debates between the two major candidates, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, federal investigations of Clinton's emails that were sent from a personal server when she held office as Secretary of State, and the release of a videotape of lewd remarks by Trump about his behavior toward women. Financial market uncertainty also played in role in the election campaign. The objective of the article is to examine the impact of these different factors on the election. Method The present article uses a popular vote prediction market to test the impact of these factors on the probability of Trump winning the election. Results Results indicate that the debates and videotape release were not statistically significant, but that a letter to Congress released by FBI Director James B. Comey on October 28, 2016, substantially decreased Clinton's probability of winning the popular vote and simultaneously increased Trump's probability. Financial market uncertainty is found to have some marginal positive effect on Trump's probability of winning. Conclusion Trump's probability of winning the election received a substantial boost from FBI Director James B. Comey's “last‐minute” announcement on October 28, 2016.

Recent campaigns by environmental activists have placed pressure on institutional investors to divest holdings of oil, coal and other fossil fuel industry stocks. A substantial literature has emerged to evaluate the effects of this divestment campaign on stock returns. Findings have been mixed, with some studies identifying above-market returns to socially responsible investing and others documenting a premium on the targeted stocks. We calculate the rate of return for a fossil fuel-free portfolio and compare it to the return for the Standard & Poor's 500 index. We also compare a portfolio consisting only of fossil-fuel oriented stocks with the S&P 500. Over various sample periods ranging from January 4, 2010 to June 29, 2018, the low-carbon portfolio typically earns a slightly higher rate of return than the overall market, due to the poor performance of the fossil fuel industry. These findings suggest that in the case of fossil fuels divestment, given the timeline of the movement, socially responsible investing has not been costly in terms of forgoing market returns.

Las recientes legalizaciones del cannabis a nivel estatal en los Estados Unidos han dado lugar a un renovado interés en la elasticidad en los precios de la demanda de cannabis y sus implicaciones en los ingresos por impuestos estatales y sobre ingresos por ventas. Utilizamos datos en colaboración abierta sobre precios, calidades y consumo de cannabis en los mercados regionales de los Estados Unidos para estimar la elasticidad en los precios de la demanda de cannabis. Utilizamos distancias desde las zonas de cultivo hasta los principales mercados como sustituto de las variaciones de los costos. Se obtiene una estimación de la elasticidad en los precios de la demanda de cannabis de -0,418, lo que sugiere que la legalización y el gravamen del cannabis para uso recreativo sería lucrativo para los erarios públicos.

Recent legalizations of cannabis at the state level in the United States have given rise to renewed interest in the price elasticity of demand for cannabis and implications for likely state excise and sales tax revenues. We use crowdsourced data on prices, qualities, and consumption of cannabis across regional markets in the United States to estimate the price elasticity of demand for cannabis. We use distances from growing areas to the major markets as a proxy for cost variations. We obtain an estimate of the price elasticity of demand for cannabis of -0.418, which suggests that legalizing and taxing recreational cannabis use would be lucrative for government treasuries.

Rather than a rigid racial ideology, it is argued that South African apartheid was a pragmatic response of a white oligarchy to changing economic and political constraints. Consequently, the degree to which apartheid principles were applied and enforced by the South African state varied over time. A public choice model is developed to explain apartheid as endogenous policy, the parameters of which are determined by political support-maximizing politicians. The model suggests that the enforcement of apartheid was responsive to changes in such exogenous variables as defence costs, the gold price and the reservation wage of black unskilled labour. Predictions of the model hold implications for the causes of the democratic transition of the 1990s, including the role played by international sanctions.

In 2006, the U.S. Congress passed the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) which prohibited financial institutions from processing transactions arising from online gaming activities, thereby severely hindering U.S. residents from participating in online casino games, primarily poker. Enactment of this legislation followed lobbying and political pressure from a variety of interest groups. By examining House roll call votes, we identify empirically the sources of political influence that resulted in passage of the internet gambling legislation. We find that party affiliation was of primary importance, with Republicans more likely to vote in favor of the bill. The percentage of constituents who are Evangelical Christians and also the number of gambling establishments in the district were positively associated with votes for the bill. However, contributions from the gaming industry decreased the probability a congressman would vote for the bill. (JEL D72, L83)

Consider a state that chooses security levels at two sites (Targets A and B), after which a terrorist chooses which site to attack (and potentially a scope of attack). The state values A more highly. If the state knows which target the terrorist values more highly, he will choose a higher level of security at this site. Under complete information, if the terrorist’s only choice is which site to attack, the state will set security levels for which the terrorist prefers to attack A over B if and only if the ratio of the value of B to the value of A is greater for the state than for the terrorist. When the state has incomplete information on the terrorist’s target values, the optimal security levels may be such that: a target is completely undefended (but attacked with positive probability); the probability of attack is greater at A than at B; and the expected damage from an attack is greater at A than at B. In total, the results reveal that the state’s choice of security is heavily influenced by the terrorist’s target valuations.