CASINO GAMBLING AS A “GROWTH POLE” STRATEGY AND ITS EFFECT ON CRIME*

ABSTRACT Casinos are often considered as a “growth pole” strategy to revitalize dilapidated regions. However, voters often reject casinos due to their perceived adverse impact on crime. Using a quasi-experimental design we analyze the impact of the casinos on crime spillover from Atlantic City to other localities in the region. We found that the level of crime in localities adjacent to Atlantic City and along the major nontoll routes to Philadelphia and New York City up to approximately 30 miles from Atlantic City rose significantly following the introduction of casinos. Crime levels are higher than they would have been in the absence of casinos.     

SPATIAL EQUILIBRIUM WITH FOOTLOOSE FIRMS*

ABSTRACT. We determine the location equilibria in a duopoly model under a novel solution concept. Typically, spatial equilibrium is described as either a simultaneous price and location game, or else as a two-stage location-then-price game. We introduce a new alternative, a two-stage price-then-location game. It is well known that no (pure strategy) equilibrium usually exists under the two standard solution concepts when products are homogeneous. We show this is also true for the new concept. We then provide numerical results for a specific functional form (the logit model) which introduces product heterogeneity into the standard framework, restoring equilibrium when the degree of substitutability between products is not too small.     

Congress and the Constitution: The Twenty-seventh Amendment and the Past and Future of Constitutional Alteration

The most recent addition to the U.S. Constitution is also one of the first proposed amendments. The 27^th Amendment restricts change to congressional salaries until after the next election. First drafted by James Madison and approved by Congress in 1789, the proposal was among a package of 12 items sent to the states. Ten of those proposed amendments were ratified and became known as the Bill of Rights. The others languished with only occasional attention by constitutional scholars. In the early 1980s, an undergraduate student at the University of Texas wrote a term paper arguing for adoption of the limits on congressional pay raises. After receiving a C grade from his teaching assistant and instructor, the student rejected the opinions of his teachers and independently pursued the adoption of Madison's proposal. Gregory Watson single-handedly mounted a letter-writing and lobbying campaign that caused state legislators to redirect their attention to the proposed amendment. In 1992, following a most unusual ratification process—including certification by the Archivist of the United States—the measure became the 27^th Amendment. In this article, we trace the history of the amendment, demonstrate that its impact has been more symbolic than substantive, and argue that Congress needs to reassert its authority over the amendment process in line with the letter and spirit of Article V. The 27^th Amendment has a peculiar constitutional history, and there are lessons we should learn from that experience.     

Primitive Liberals and Pirate Tribes: Black-Flag Radicalism and the Kibbo Kift

ABSTRACT

The Age of Catastrophe (1914–1945) has long been considered a crisis of liberalism. As a political platform and moralistic worldview, the hollowness of liberalism’s promise was exposed when total war struck at the heart of Europe, undermining its presumption of imperial hegemony over much of the world. What emerged in its wake, amid the swells of irremediable nationalisms, is the subject of this article. Blinded by the fog of war and bright lights of modernity, historians often fail to catch the glimpses of alternative aspirations, which escaped the age’s ruptures so as to reinvent and redeem humanity from the depths of its bloody past. Against a backdrop of neglected case studies from Britain and elsewhere – from the Luddites to the Kindred of the Kibbo Kift – this article seeks to show how the spectre of death inspired new ideals of youth and civility that rejected the arrogance of imperial masculinity and industrialised oppression, turning instead to visions of global kinship that were socialist and anarchic, romantic and utopian, primitive and piratical.