For decades, the debate over the merits of ending drug prohibition has carried on with little consequence. The recent near success of a cannabis legalization initiative in California suggests that citizens and politicians alike are more receptive to calls for change. We review basic research on deterrence and prices as well as emerging evidence on the potential empirical consequences of various alternatives to full prohibition, including depenalization, tolerated home cultivation, prescription regimes for cannabis and heroin, and retail sales of cannabis in Dutch coffee shops. The results are encouraging for advocates of these specific reforms, but the cases are inadequate for addressing the potentially more dramatic effects of full-scale commercial markets. The fundamental dilemma is that full legalization will probably reduce average harm per use but increase total consumption; the net effect of these two changes is difficult to project.

The efficient reduction of GHG emissions requires appropriate retail pricing of off-peak
electricity. However, off-peak electricity for residential consumers is priced at 331% above its marginal cost
in the United States as a whole (June 2009). Even for the 1% of residences that are on some form of
time-of- use (TOU) rate schedule, the off-peak rate is almost three times higher than the marginal
cost. A barrier to marginal-cost based TOU rates is that less than 9% of U.S. households have the
“smart” meters in place that can measure and record the time of consumption. Policies should be put
in place to achieve full deployment. Another important barrier is consumer concern about TOU rate
design. Two TOU rate designs (baseline and two-part tariff) are described that utilize marginal-cost based rates, ensure appropriate cost recovery, and minimize bill changes from current rate structures. A final barrier is to get residences on to these rates. Should a marginal-cost based TOU rate design remain an alternative for which residences could “opt-in,” or become the default choice, or become mandatory?
Time-invariant rates are a historical anachronism that subsidize very costly peak-period consumption and penalize off-
peak usage to our environmental detriment. They should be phased out.

Agriculture has multiple functions to fulfill for the development of the Sub-Saharan Africa countries: a source of growth, an instrument for poverty reduction, and a contribution to the provision of environmental services. Yet, it is still used far below potential, with gains in land and labor productivity lagging below those of other regions. Successful use of agriculture for development will require greater attention by governments and donors, supported by scholarship and learning. The economics profession has an important role to play in helping re-conceptualize in a new paradigm the role of agriculture for development, design and evaluate new approaches, contribute to capacity building, and participate to policy advice and the mobilization of political
support.

What is the landscape of the racial politics of public education in the age of Obama? To what factors can we attribute the seeming educational policy consensus from Washington, DC, to the states and from philanthropies and policy entrepreneurs in urban school districts? How should we understand opposition to the policy menu? This article examines commonsense understandings in education reform, which are supported by assertions that market-based schooling options are superior for children of color, and argues that a primary reason for the popularity of such reforms is an underexamined advocacy coalition, formed nominally around school choice, while also encompassing several other entrepreneurial educational reforms. The article describes the structure of this network, arguing that its dominance has precluded an understanding of counter advocacy against school choice and related reforms. It then describes several past and current movements that challenge commonsense understandings of the reforms’ currency, as a way of pushing back against the reforms’ expansion. The article also discusses the activities of grassroots community groups in response to market-based reforms and argues that these efforts can help to expand public deliberation on complex matters of educational policy. The article concludes with recommendations for further examination of these efforts to highlight the concerns, strategies, and solutions to educational inequality being articulated within communities of color and with their allies.

More than 2 years after the official end of the Great Recession, the labor market remains historically weak. One candidate explanation is supply-side effects driven by dramatic expansions of unemployment insurance (UI) benefit durations, to as long as 99 weeks. This paper investigates the effect of these extensions on job search and reemployment. I use the longitudinal structure of the Current Population Survey to construct unemployment exit hazards that vary across states, over time, and between individuals with differing unemployment durations. I then use these hazards to explore a variety of comparisons intended to distinguish the effects of UI extensions from other determinants of employment outcomes. The various specifications yield quite similar results. UI extensions had significant but small negative effects on the probability that the eligible unemployed would exit unemployment. These effects are concentrated among the long-term unemployed. The estimates imply that UI extensions raised the unemployment rate in early 2011 by only about 0.1 to 0.5 percentage point, much less than implied by previous analyses, with at least half of this effect attributable to reduced labor force exit among the unemployed rather than to the changes in reemployment rates that are of greater policy concern.

Aims To examine the empirical consequences of officially tolerated retail sales of cannabis in the Netherlands, and possible implications for the legalization debate. Methods Available Dutch data on the prevalence and patterns of use, treatment, sanctioning, prices and purity for cannabis dating back to the 1970s are compared to similar indicators in Europe and the United States. Results The available evidence suggests that the prevalence of cannabis use among Dutch citizens rose and fell as the number of coffeeshops increased and later declined, but only modestly. The coffeeshops do not appear to encourage escalation into heavier use or lengthier using careers, although treatment rates for cannabis are higher than elsewhere in Europe. Scatterplot analyses suggest that Dutch patterns of use are very typical for Europe, and that the ‘separation of markets’ may indeed have somewhat weakened the link between cannabis use and the use of cocaine or amphetamines.Conclusions Cannabis consumption in the Netherlands is lower than would be expected in an unrestricted market, perhaps because cannabis prices have remained high due to production-level prohibitions. The Dutch system serves as a nuanced alternative to both full prohibition and full legalization.