Is Tullock correct about Sunday closing laws?

John Moorhouse

Public Choice, 1984, vol. 42, issue 2, 197-203

Abstract: The evidence presented in this note suggests that, other things equal, the imposition of a Sunday closing law reduces the number of food stores in a given market. This finding directly contradicts Tullock's hypothesis about the long-run effects of Sunday closing laws on investment in food stores. By implication, the evidence also casts doubt on the appropriateness of using Sunday closing laws as an example of a government sanctioned privilege that generates no long-run benefits even to those who sought the grant of privilege in the first place. But there is little surprise in all this, particularly if the real impetus behind blue laws comes, not from store keepers seeking higher profit margins, but from those of certain religious convictions. As the preamble to the Arkansas statute says, ‘Keeping a grocery open on Sunday is a temptation to vice ....’ (p. 569). However, while Tullock's particular illustration may be a poor one, his main thesis concerning ‘the transitional gains trap’ remains a useful insight. Copyright Martinus Nijhoff Publishers 1984

Date: 1984
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/BF00124162 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:pubcho:v:42:y:1984:i:2:p:197-203

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... ce/journal/11127/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/BF00124162

Access Statistics for this article

Public Choice is currently edited by WIlliam F. Shughart II

More articles in Public Choice from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().