IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aea/aecrev/v106y2016i8p2009-45.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Marijuana on Main Street? Estimating Demand in Markets with Limited Access

Author

Listed:
  • Liana Jacobi
  • Michelle Sovinsky

Abstract

Marijuana is the most common illicit drug with vocal advocates for legalization. Among other things, legalization would increase access and remove the stigma of illegality. Our model disentangles the role of access from preferences and shows that selection into access is not random. We find that traditional demand estimates are biased resulting in incorrect policy conclusions. If marijuana were legalized, those under 30 would see modest increases in use of 28 percent, while on average use would increase by 48 percent (to 19.4 percent). Tax policies are effective at curbing use, where Australia could raise AU$1 billion (and the United States US$12 billion).

Suggested Citation

  • Liana Jacobi & Michelle Sovinsky, 2016. "Marijuana on Main Street? Estimating Demand in Markets with Limited Access," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 106(8), pages 2009-2045, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:aea:aecrev:v:106:y:2016:i:8:p:2009-45
    Note: DOI: 10.1257/aer.20131032
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.20131032
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/articles/attachments?retrieve=SPueBVSVx6e9YTpmXviKyeoLtKFiTtA8
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/articles/attachments?retrieve=MC5-KmDqH2DVzpgbddLspBJIqPGG-qEn
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/articles/attachments?retrieve=Tk2XWNVvFRP0y1t0byz6TOY6YItF1geb
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Albert, James H & Chib, Siddhartha, 1993. "Bayes Inference via Gibbs Sampling of Autoregressive Time Series Subject to Markov Mean and Variance Shifts," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 11(1), pages 1-15, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Manuela Goretti, 2005. "The Brazilian currency turmoil of 2002: a nonlinear analysis," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 10(4), pages 289-306.
    2. Raggi, Davide & Bordignon, Silvano, 2012. "Long memory and nonlinearities in realized volatility: A Markov switching approach," Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 56(11), pages 3730-3742.
    3. Owyang, Michael T. & Piger, Jeremy & Wall, Howard J., 2013. "Discordant city employment cycles," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(2), pages 367-384.
    4. Nima Nonejad, 2013. "Time-Consistency Problem and the Behavior of US Inflation from 1970 to 2008," CREATES Research Papers 2013-25, Department of Economics and Business Economics, Aarhus University.
    5. Myroslav Pidkuyko, 2014. "Dynamics of Consumption and Dividends over the Business Cycle," CERGE-EI Working Papers wp522, The Center for Economic Research and Graduate Education - Economics Institute, Prague.
    6. Penelope A. Smith & Peter M. Summers, 2005. "How well do Markov switching models describe actual business cycles? The case of synchronization," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 20(2), pages 253-274.
    7. Sylvia Frühwirth‐Schnatter & Sylvia Kaufmann, 2006. "How do changes in monetary policy affect bank lending? An analysis of Austrian bank data," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 21(3), pages 275-305, April.
    8. Keisuke Hirano & Guido W. Imbens & Geert Ridder & Donald B. Rubin, 2001. "Combining Panel Data Sets with Attrition and Refreshment Samples," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 69(6), pages 1645-1659, November.
    9. Gordon, Stephen & St-Amour, Pascal, 1997. "Asset Prices with Contingent Preferences," Cahiers de recherche 9712, Université Laval - Département d'économique, revised 08 Jun 1998.
    10. Billio, Monica & Casarin, Roberto & Ravazzolo, Francesco & van Dijk, Herman K., 2012. "Combination schemes for turning point predictions," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 52(4), pages 402-412.
    11. Chib, Siddhartha, 1998. "Estimation and comparison of multiple change-point models," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 86(2), pages 221-241, June.
    12. Sylvia Kaufmann, 2002. "Is there an asymmetric effect of monetary policy over time? A Bayesian analysis using Austrian data," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 27(2), pages 277-297.
    13. Gabriele Fiorentini & Enrique Sentana & Neil Shephard, 2004. "Likelihood-Based Estimation of Latent Generalized ARCH Structures," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 72(5), pages 1481-1517, September.
    14. Andreas Graflund, 2000. "A Bayes Inference Approach to Testing Mean Reversion in the Swedish Stock Market," Econometric Society World Congress 2000 Contributed Papers 1363, Econometric Society.
    15. Barnett, Glen & Kohn, Robert & Sheather, Simon, 1996. "Bayesian estimation of an autoregressive model using Markov chain Monte Carlo," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 74(2), pages 237-254, October.
    16. Taylor, Andrew & Shepherd, David & Duncan, Stephen, 2005. "The structure of the Australian growth process: A Bayesian model selection view of Markov switching," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 22(4), pages 628-645, July.
    17. Héctor Zárate & Norberto Rodríguez & Margarita Marín, 2013. "El tamano de las empresas y la transmisión de la política monetaria en Colombia: una aplicación con la encuesta mensual de expectativas económicas," Revista de Economía del Rosario, Universidad del Rosario, June.
    18. Patton, Andrew J. & Timmermann, Allan, 2007. "Properties of optimal forecasts under asymmetric loss and nonlinearity," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 140(2), pages 884-918, October.
    19. Chib, Siddhartha & Greenberg, Edward, 1995. "Hierarchical analysis of SUR models with extensions to correlated serial errors and time-varying parameter models," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 68(2), pages 339-360, August.
    20. Gärtner, Dennis L. & Halbheer, Daniel, 2009. "Are there waves in merger activity after all?," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 27(6), pages 708-718, November.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D12 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Consumer Economics: Empirical Analysis
    • H25 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Business Taxes and Subsidies
    • K14 - Law and Economics - - Basic Areas of Law - - - Criminal Law
    • K42 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior - - - Illegal Behavior and the Enforcement of Law

    Lists

    This item is featured on the following reading lists, Wikipedia, or ReplicationWiki pages:
    1. Marijuana on Main Street? Estimating Demand in Markets with Limited Access (AER 2016) in ReplicationWiki

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aea:aecrev:v:106:y:2016:i:8:p:2009-45. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Michael P. Albert (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aeaaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.