Date of Award

5-2011

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Legacy Department

Economics

Committee Chair/Advisor

Jerzmanowski, Michal

Committee Member

Cvrcek , Tomas

Committee Member

Bodenhorn , Howard

Abstract

Two topics of much debate in the United States, immigration and drug prohibition, are issues that all countries must scrutinize. I have taken two Euro areas, Scandinavia and Portugal, and have attempted to use them as templates for the United States so to draw potential policy implications. Scandinavian countries can be characterized as having pull factors in the form of welfare policies, which draw immigrants to those countries. It is hard to deduce whether this has a negative effect on the country because immigrants, not only use services, but are also consumers. This creates a problem as we try to compare those countries to the United States, because the U.S. is not a welfare state. We find that in order to control the situation acceptance of trade-offs are necessary. Furthermore, I use Portugal as a model for how the United States should conduct its drug policy. As we know, drug prohibition fosters cartelization, violent and nonviolent crime, spread of disease, and overdosing. Portugal has fundamentally reduced those harms by decriminalization. Here, we find that the United States must also consider a set of trade-offs.

Included in

Economics Commons

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