PublicationsAbstract: James Buchanan argues that profit seeking and rent seeking are formally the same sort of behavior, but that the substance of such activities—whether they create or destroy wealth—depends on the institutional environment within which they take place. William Baumol and Israel Kirzner each flesh out this distinction between form and substance in more detail but in different ways. Baumol distinguishes between productive, unproductive, and destructive forms of entrepreneurship, while Kirzner distinguishes between ordinary types of entrepreneurial discovery and superfluous discoveries. In this essay we argue that Baumol and Kirzner’s contributions are complementary, providing a more complete taxonomy of the substance of entrepreneurial activity. We also integrate these ideas with recent work on institutional entrepreneurship that examines changes in the rules governing economic activity. We illustrate this taxonomy by examining entrepreneurial innovation in drug markets both legal and illegal, identifying cases of productive, superfluous, erroneous, unproductive, destructive, and protective entrepreneurship. ​​Abstract: Title II, the Controlled Substances Act (CSA), of the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970 created the system of drug scheduling and regulation used to this day. This paper illustrates how the CSA created the incentives for induced ‘malnovation’ (innovation intended to circumvent legislation, and thus foil policymakers’ intended ends) into drug markets, namely “designer drugs.” As a result of this induced malnovation, drug markets have not only increased in variance of products available that are often sold under similar street names, but there is a tendency towards creating more dangerous drugs in an attempt to stay outside of the regulation.
​
  • "Still Searching for the Tzutzu Flower: Cautions Against Extending the Federal Analogue Act of 1986" University of Florida Journal of Law & Public Policy, forthcoming (accepted November 2015).
​Abstract: The synthetic drug phenomenon has become a growing concern for ordinary citizens, law enforcement, as well as the medical community. Many policymakers and legal scholars have suggested that the only way to curb this issue is to extend the authority to the Drug Enforcement Administration and previous legislation like the Controlled Substance Analogue Enforcement Act of 1986. Using the tools of economics, I analyze post-1970 drug policies and the incentives they created. I also analyze recent policy recommendations to see if they better equipped to handle the nature of the synthetic drug market. I find that all of these policies, old and proposed, fail to acknowledge the incentives they create for drug producers to develop and sell new forms of analogs and synthetic drugs. As a result of increased drug scheduling policies, more synthetic drugs are developed and put on the market. Scheduling policies also lead to increases the potency of drugs available and subsequent problems of asymmetric information, thus making drug consumers worse off. Abstract: The economics literature cites the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act of 1914 as the start of the War on Drugs. With few exceptions, the literature fails to explain the dynamic nature of interventionism. This paper uses a dynamic model of interventionism to show that state and federal legislation passed in the late 19th century produced unintended consequences that ultimately led to the passage of the Harrison Act.
​

Working Papers
  • *"Is Medical Marijuana a Gateway Drug?: The Effect of Medical Marijuana Legalization on Heroin Use Rates" (with Gregory DeAngelo)         
Abstract: The United States is presently going through two substantial changes as it relates to drug use—more states are legalizing marijuana for the purposes of medical treatment and prescription opioid abuse is on the rise, resulting in heroin use rates nearly quadrupling over the past fifteen years. Historically, marijuana has been viewed as a gateway drug. Recent research suggests that medical marijuana legalization has decreased incidence of prescription and other opioid use and overdose. Examining heroin use data and other control variables, we test the effect of medical marijuana legalization on heroin use to determine whether medical marijuana is a gateway drug or substitute for heroin. We find that medical marijuana legalization has a generally negative, but statistically insignificant effect on heroin use rates. This suggests that while the legalization of medical marijuana will not lead to a reduction in heroin use, medical marijuana is not a gateway drug for heroin. Our findings are consistent with recent research on medical marijuana legalization and hard-drug use.

​

*Articles from my dissertation:"High Hopes" and "Bad Bundles": The Political Economy of U.S. Drug Control Policy