State Liquor Licensing, Implicit Contracting, and Dry/Wet Counties

Eugenia Toma

Economic Inquiry, 1988, vol. 26, issue 3, 507-24

Abstract: Local option liquor laws are generally interpreted as granting vote rs the right to choose between allowing and prohibiting alcoholic bevera ge sales. This paper argues that the real choice confronting voters i s between legal sales according to state-prescribed rules and illegal sales according to an informal set of locally-determined rules. Give n this choice, rational voters will choose the option with the lower relative price. State laws restricting the number of licenses that can be issued in legally-wet jurisdictions prove to be more powerful than religious preferences in explaining the pattern of dry counties. Copyright 1988 by Oxford University Press.

Date: 1988
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

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:oup:ecinqu:v:26:y:1988:i:3:p:507-24

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

Economic Inquiry is currently edited by Preston McAfee

More articles in Economic Inquiry from Western Economic Association International Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().