The Impact of Cannabis Use on Health

Summary Chronic daily cannabis use has been shown to have long term harmful health effects, which in turn is expected to reduce labour market productivity. The evidence is less clear on the health impact of less frequent consumption, which is the more typical mode of use, and previous empirical studies fail to find robust evidence of an adverse impact of these modes of use on labour market productivity. This paper attempts to shed some light on this issue by directly estimating the impact of cannabis consumption in the past week and past year on health status using information on prime age individuals living in Australia. We find that cannabis use does reduce self-assessed health status, with the effect of weekly use being of a similar magnitude as smoking cigarettes daily. Moreover, we find evidence of a dose-response relationship in the health impact of cannabis use, with annual use having roughly half the impact of weekly use.Helpful comments on an earlier draft were received from Jan van Ours, Rosalie Pacula, two anonymous referees and participants at the 81st Annual Conference of the Western Economic Association International.     

Are There Differential Effects of Price and Policy on College Students’Drinking Intensity?

This article investigates the impact of campus bans on alcohol use and the price of alcohol on college students'drinking intensity. The impact of a campus ban on drinking appears to depend on the ability of students to substitute off-campus access to alcohol for on-campus access. Where few off-campus alternatives exist, campus bans reduce the odds that a student becomes a heavy drinker but have no impact on the odds of transitioning from abstainer to drinker. Where off-campus alternatives are more plentiful, campus bans are less effective. Increasing the price of alcohol appears to be equally effective at reducing the likelihood of drinking and heavy drinking. (JEL)     

Abstracts

Quality & Quantity -     

Incentives and Information Exchange in International Taxation

The exchange of taxpayer-specific information between national tax authorities has recently emerged as a key and controversial topic in international tax policy discussions, most notably with the OECD's harmful tax practices project and the EU's savings tax initiative. This paper analyzes the effects of information exchange and withholding taxes, recognizing that countries which agree to exchange information do not forfeit the ability to levy withholding taxes, and also focusing in particular on the effects of innovative revenue-sharing arrangements. Amongst the findings are that: (i) the transfer of withholding tax receipts to the residence country, as planned in the European Union, has no effect on equilibrium tax rates, but acts purely as a lump-sum transfer; (ii) in contrast, allocating some of the revenue from information exchange to the source country—counter to usual practice (though no less so than the EU agreement)—would have adverse strategic effects on total revenue; (iii) nevertheless, any withholding tax regime is Pareto dominated by information exchange combined with appropriate revenue sharing; and, in particular, (iv) sharing of the additional revenues raised from information provided, while efficiency-reducing, could be in the interests of large countries as a means of persuading small countries to provide that information voluntarily. JEL Code: H77, H87, F42     

Maintaining a Reputation for Consistently Beating Earnings Expectations and the Slippery Slope to Earnings Manipulation

This paper investigates whether maintaining a reputation for consistently beating analysts' earnings expectations can motivate executives to move from “within GAAP” earnings management to “outside of GAAP” earnings manipulation. We analyze firms subject to SEC enforcement actions and find that these firms consistently beat analysts' quarterly earnings forecasts in the three years prior to the manipulation period and continue to do so by smaller “beats” during the manipulation period. We find that manipulating firms beat expectations around 86 percent of the time in the 12 quarters prior to the manipulation period (versus 75 percent for control firms) and that manipulation often ends with a miss in expectations. We document that executives of manipulating firms face strong stock market and CEO pressure to perform. Prior to the manipulation period, these firms have high analyst optimism, growing institutional interest, and high market valuations, along with powerful CEOs. Further, we find that maintaining a reputation for beating expectations is more important than CEO overconfidence and is incremental to CEO equity incentives for explaining manipulation. Our results suggest that pressure to maintain a reputation for beating analysts' expectations can encourage aggressive accounting and, ultimately, earnings manipulation.     

Supply-side investments: An international analysis of the return and risk relationship in the Travel & Leisure sector

This study investigates supply-side investments in the tourism sector, analysing the return and risk relationship of investments in tourism across several countries. The performance of tourism sector companies listed on the stock exchange, for the top one dozen countries according to the World Economic Forum (WEF) tourism rankings, is investigated by region, across these countries and within each country by comparison to other sectors. Several metrics are used to compare the risk-adjusted returns, over a 15-year period ending March 2007 and sub-periods to check the persistence of performance over time. The results present a strikingly different ranking than those of the WEF. The implications for the flow of investment funds are of importance in a global capital market. Money will flow to those investments with the highest expected returns for a given risk level and this has consequential impacts for economic growth and employment in the tourism sector.     

Kicking against tradition: women’s football,negotiating friendships and social spaces

This article examines friendships and social networks in the context of amateur women’s football. Studies of intimacies and friendships tend to situate women’s same-sex friendships around emotional support. The aim of this research seeks to account for more depth in understanding diversity in female friendships. The traditionally masculine (football) environment is peculiarly distinctive because it contrasts with traditional spaces found in private, domestic context that have traditionally associated with the formation and negotiation of ‘feminine’ friendship identities. Utilising 10 narrative interviews, the paper examines social and friendship networks in two main areas. Firstly, although non-traditional social groupings were evident, it was apparent that some participants had to negotiate a dual private/public role. Secondly, there were friendships based on sociability and these were integral to the connectedness of groups not defined by conventionally gendered roles, defined by emotional ties, but instead on collective interest focused around playing sport. These groupings are of interest because they are contrary to conventionality that frame emotional femininity, and foreground social activities that accentuate cultural complexities rather than confine friendship groups in terms of either masculine or feminine cultural practices. Drawing on the grounded experiences of female football players, we found that female friendships are much more layered and complex than represented in broader cultural discourse.     

DEVELOPMENT PRESSURES AND HERITAGE IN THE PERTH CENTRAL BUSINESS DISTRICT, 1950–90

This article examines the remaking of Perth's Central Business District (CBD) during the 1950–90 period. It traces the establishment of a modernist development ethos in Perth's planning, outlines the inadequacy of the City's planning regulations, and analyses the impact on St George's Terrace, the city's main commercial thoroughfare. The City Council was largely incapable of restraining excessive development and the extension of its system of plot ratios encouraged manipulation to increase the height of developments. Several important historic buildings were demolished because there were no legal means of safeguarding the city's heritage until 1990.     

The Interaction of Learning Styles and Teaching Methodologies in Accounting Ethical Instruction

Ethical instruction is critical for trainee accountants. Various teaching methods, both active and passive, are normally utilised when teaching accounting ethics. However, students’ learning styles are rarely assessed. This study evaluates the learning styles of accounting students and assesses the interaction of teaching methods and learning styles in an ethics instruction environment. The ethical attitudes and preferred learning styles of a cohort (137) of final year accounting students were evaluated pre-instruction. They were then subject to three different teaching methods while studying ethics during an auditing course. When ethical attitudes and preferred learning styles were re-assessed post-instruction, the teaching methods were found to have influenced active learners more than passive ones. Furthermore, when learning styles matched teaching methods used, usefulness was assessed as high but when learning styles and teaching methods differed, usefulness deteriorated significantly. Students displayed a preference for passive learning styles, despite being so advanced in their education. The implications are that instructors should consider learning styles before deciding on appropriate teaching methods, in accounting ethics environments.