Regulating Vice

Jim Leitzel teaches public policy and economics at the University of Chicago. He received his PhD in economics from Duke University; he has taught at Vanderbilt University and Duke University, and served as the Academic Coordinator at the New Economic School in Moscow. Professor Leitzel has been a National Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, and an Atlantic Fellow in Public Policy based at the Department of Economics of the University of Essex. His research has concerned areas such as transition economics, gun control, and law and economics, and his previous books include Russian Economic Reform and The Political Economy of Rule Evasion and Policy Reform. Professor Leitzel works with the Economics Education and Research Consortium (EERC) in the former Soviet Union and the Bridging Research and Policy program of the Global Development Network (GDN). He is the founding member of Vice Squad (vicesquad.blogspot.com), a blog devoted to vice policy.

'Leitzel focuses on public policy towards traditional vices such as alcohol, nicotine, drugs, gambling and commercial sex. He explains why vice prohibitions are generally misguided, and also describes the dangers of unfettered access to alcohol, cocaine or heroin.' The Times Higher Education Supplement

• 1. The harm principle; 2. Addiction: rational and otherwise; 3. The robustness principle; 4. Prohibition; 5. Taxation, licensing, and advertising controls; 6. Commercial sex; 7. The internet and vice; 8. Free trade and federalism; Conclusions; Appendix: vice statistics; References.