This collection examines prohibitions – the outlawing of the manufacture, distribution, sale or provision of particular goods and services by consenting adults. After this introduction, the book begins with an overview of the economics of prohibition and then the subsequent chapters analyse the prohibition of the following goods, services and activities:

• recreational drugs, in particular cocaine, heroin and marijuana;
• boxing;
• firearms;
• advertising;
• pornography;
• medicinal drugs;
• prostitution;
• gambling;
• body parts for transplant;
• alcohol.

The above goods, services and activities are all prohibited in some part of the world, and in some cases – such as those of alcohol, gambling and prostitution – in large parts of the world.

The chapters in this collection are written by an international cast of authors from across the social science disciplines. The authors include economists, lawyers, political scientists, philosophers and sociologists, who have applied their expertise to the problems posed by the provision of these particular goods and services both outside and inside the law.

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Contents:
1. Introduction by John Meadowcroft
2. Prohibitions and economics: an overview by Martin Ricketts and Geoffrey E Wood
3. Recreational drugs by Mark Thornton and Simon W Bowmaker
4. Boxing by Ralf M Bader
5. Firearms by Gary A Mauser
6. Advertising by Alberto Mingardi
7. Pornography by Nadine Strossen
8. Medical drugs and devices by Alexander Tabarrok
9. Prostitution by John Meadowcroft
10. Gambling by Robert Simmons
11. Human body parts for transplantation by Mark J Cherry
12. Alcohol by K Austin Kerr

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First published in Great Britain in 2008 by The Institute of Economic Affairs.

About the Authors:

Ralf M. Bader
Ralf M. Bader read Philosophy, Politics and Economics at the University of Oxford (St Edmund Hall), gaining a First Class degree. While at Oxford, he refounded the Oxford Hayek Society. Having completed an MLitt with Distinction in philosophy at the University of St Andrews, he is now working on his PhD at St Andrews and is currently a visiting researcher in the philosophy department at Stanford University.

His research focuses on metaphysics, ethics and libertarianism, and he is presently writing a book on Robert Nozick for the Major Conservative and Libertarian Thinkers series to be published by Continuum.

Simon W. Bowmaker
Simon W. Bowmaker is a Visiting Lecturer in Economics at New York University. Prior to pursuing an academic career, he worked as an economist at HSBC Markets, the Government Economic Service and Cambridge Econometrics. For several years, Simon taught economics at the University of Edinburgh and has held visiting teaching positions at a number of universities in the United States, including Florida State University, State University of New York at Buffalo, University of Colorado at Denver and Georgia Institute of Technology.

His research interests include the economics of marriage, crime and drug policy, and these topics feature in a book he recently edited, Economics Uncut: A Complete Guide to Life, Death, and Misadventure (Edward Elgar, 2005). He received his economics training from Aberdeen, Cambridge and St Andrews universities.

Mark J. Cherry
Mark J. Cherry is the Dr Patricia A. Hayes Professor in Applied Ethics at St Edward’s University, Austin, Texas. He is author of Kidney for Sale by Owner: Human Organs, Transplantation, and the Market (Georgetown University Press, 2005). He serves as editor of the Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, editor of Christian Bioethics, editor-in-chief of Health- Care Ethics Committee Forum and book series co-editor of the Annals of Bioethics. He is editor or co-editor of the books: Persons and Their Bodies: Rights, Responsibilities, Relationships (Kluwer, 1999), Allocating Scarce Medical Resources: Roman Catholic Perspectives (Georgetown University Press, 2002), Regional Perspectives in Bioethics (Taylor and Francis, 2003), Religious Perspectives in Bioethics (Taylor and Francis, 2004), Natural Law and the Possibility of a Global Bioethics (Springer, 2004), The Death of Metaphysics; The Death of Culture (Springer, 2005) and Pluralistic Casuistry (Springer, 2007). He is also credited with numerous articles, book chapters and other publications.

K. Austin Kerr
K. Austin Kerr is a Professor Emeritus of History at Ohio State University.

His writings include Organized for Prohibition: A New History of the Anti-Saloon League (Yale University Press, 1985), ‘In the shadow of Prohibition: domestic American alcohol policy Since 1933’, Business History, July 2005 (with Pamela E. Pennock) and ‘The rebirth of brewing and distilling in the United States in 1933: government policy and industry structure’, Business and Economic History On Line, Business History Conference, 2005.

He has served as President of the Alcohol and Drugs Historical Society and of the Business History Conference. In addition to his service at Ohio State University, Professor Kerr has been a Fulbright Professor at Waseda University, the University of Tokyo and the University of Hamburg.

Gary A. Mauser
Gary Mauser is a professor at the Institute for Canadian Urban Research Studies, Faculty of Business Administration, Simon Fraser University, in British Columbia, Canada. He received his PhD from the University of California, Irvine. Recent publications include, ‘Would banning firearms reduce murder and suicide? A review of international evidence’, Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy (co-author Don B. Kates, 2007) and Hubris in the North: The Canadian Firearms Registry (Fraser Institute, 2007). He has made invited presentations to the United Nations Conference on Small Arms and Light Weapons, the Canadian House of Commons, and he has testified as an expert witness before the Supreme Court of Canada. For more information please see his website, www.garymauser.net.

John Meadowcroft
John Meadowcroft is Lecturer in Public Policy at King’s College London. He is the author of The Ethics of the Market (Palgrave, 2005), which won an Intercollegiate Studies Institute Templeton Enterprise Award, co-author with Mark Pennington of Rescuing Social Capital from Social Democracy (Institute of Economic Affairs, 2007), which won the Arthur Seldon CBE Award for Excellence, and co-editor with Philip Booth of The Road to Economic Freedom (Edward Elgar, 2006). Since 2004 he has been a Deputy Editor and Book Review Editor of the IEA journal Economic Affairs. He is Series Editor of the Major Conservative and Libertarian Thinkers series to be published by Continuum.

Alberto Mingardi
Alberto Mingardi is managing director of the Istituto Bruno Leoni, the Italian free market think tank, which he helped to establish in 2003. He is also a Senior Fellow with the Centre for the New Europe. In 2002, he was a Calihan Fellow at the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty. He is the translator into English of Antonio Rosmini Serbati’s masterpiece The Constitution under Social Justice (Lexington Books, 2007). He has also contributed to a wide range of publications, in Italian as well as in English, including the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the Financial Times, Economic Affairs and the Journal of Markets and Morality.

Martin Ricketts
Martin Ricketts is Professor of Economic Organisation and Dean of Humanities at the University of Buckingham. He has published in professional journals on the Theory of the Firm, Public Choice and the New Institutional Economics. He is author of The Economics of Energy (Macmillan, 1980) (with Michael G. Webb), British Economic Opinion (Institute of Economic Affairs, 1990) (with Edward Shoesmith) and is sole author of The Many Ways of Governance (Social Affairs Unit, 1999) and The Economics of Business Enterprise (Edward Elgar, 3rd edition, 2002). He was Economic Director of the National Economic Development Office (UK) (1991–92), Dean of the School of Business at the University of Buckingham (1993–97) and is chairman of the Academic Advisory Council and a managing trustee of the Institute of Economic Affairs.

Robert Simmons
Rob Simmons is Senior Lecturer in Economics at Lancaster University Management School. He has a PhD from the University of Leeds.

His research interests include sports economics and the economics of gambling. Recently published articles on the economics of gambling have covered topics in sports betting and lottery play.

These have appeared in Applied Economics, the International Journal of Forecasting and the Oxford Review of Economic Policy. He has served as an expert adviser to the UK House of Commons Select Committee for Culture, Media and Sport. He also serves on the editorial boards of the International Journal of Sport Finance and the Journal of Sports Economics.

Nadine Strossen
Nadine Strossen, Professor of Law at New York Law School, has written, lectured and practised extensively in the areas of constitutional law, civil liberties and international human rights.

In 1991, she was elected President of the American Civil Liberties Union, the first woman to head the largest and oldest civil liberties organisation in the USA (since the AC LU presidency is non-paid, Strossen continues in her faculty position as well). The National Law Journal has named Strossen one of America’s ‘100 Most Influential Lawyers’. She makes approximately two hundred public presentations per year, before diverse audiences, and she also comments frequently on legal issues in the national media. Strossen’s more than 250 published writings have appeared in many scholarly and general-interest publications.

Alexander Tabarrok
Alexander Tabarrok is Associate Professor of Economics at George Mason University and Director of Research for the Independent Institute.

Professor Tabarrok is co-author of the website FDAR eview.org, an extensive resource on the history, policies and potential reform of the FDA . H e is also the editor of the books Entrepreneurial Economics: Bright Ideas from the Dismal Science (Oxford University Press, 2002), The Voluntary City: Choice, Community, and Civil Society (University of Michigan Press, 2002) (with David Beito and Peter Gordon) and Changing the Guard: Private Prisons and the Control of Crime (Independent Institute, 2002). His papers have appeared in the Journal of Law and Economics, Public Choice, Economic Inquiry, the Journal of Health Economics, the Journal of Theoretical Politics, the American Law and Economics Review, Kyklos and many other journals. Popular articles by Professor Tabarrok have appeared in magazines and newspapers throughout the United States, and he writes regularly for the blog MarginalRevolution.

Mark Thornton
Mark Thornton is Senior Fellow at the Ludwig von Mises Institute. He serves as the Book Review Editor of the Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics and as a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Libertarian Studies. He has served as the editor of the Austrian Economics Newsletter and as a member of the graduate faculties of Auburn University and Columbus State University. He has also taught economics at Auburn University in Montgomery and Trinity University in Texas. Mark served as Assistant Superintendent of Banking and economic adviser to Governor Fob James of Alabama (1997–99) and was awarded the University Research Award at Columbus State University in 2002.

His books include The Economics of Prohibition (University of Utah Press, 1991), Tariffs, Blockades, and Inflation: The Economics of the Civil War (Rowman and Littlefield, 2004), The Quotable Mises (Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2005) and The Bastiat Collection (Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2007). He has over sixty articles published in academic journals and books. He is a graduate of St Bonaventure University and received his PhD in economics from Auburn University.

Geoffrey E. Wood
Geoffrey Wood is Professor of Economics at the Sir John Cass Business School in London and Professor of Monetary Economics at the University of Buckingham. He is a graduate of Aberdeen and Essex universities, and has worked in the Federal Reserve System, the Bank of England and at several universities in Britain and overseas.

He has authored, co-authored or edited over twenty books, and has published over one hundred academic papers. His fields of interest are monetary economics, monetary history and financial regulation.

About The IEA:

The Institute is a research and educational charity (No. CC 235 351), limited by guarantee. Its mission is to improve understanding of the fundamental institutions of a free society by analysing and expounding the role of markets in solving economic and social problems.

The IEA achieves its mission by:
• a high-quality publishing programme
• conferences, seminars, lectures and other events
• outreach to school and college students
• brokering media introductions and appearances

The IEA, which was established in 1955 by the late Sir Antony Fisher, is an educational charity, not a political organisation. It is independent of any political party or group and does not carry on activities intended to affect support for any political party or candidate in any election or referendum, or at any other time. It is financed by sales of publications, conference fees and voluntary donations.

In addition to its main series of publications the IEA also publishes a quarterly journal, Economic Affairs.

The IEA is aided in its work by a distinguished international Academic Advisory Council and an eminent panel of Honorary Fellows. Together with other academics, they review prospective IEA publications, their comments being passed on anonymously to authors. All IEA papers are therefore subject to the same rigorous independent refereeing process as used by leading academic journals.

IEA publications enjoy widespread classroom use and course adoptions in schools and universities. They are also sold throughout the world and often translated/reprinted.

Since 1974 the IEA has helped to create a worldwide network of 100 similar institutions in over 70 countries. They are all independent but share the IEA’s mission.

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