The corrupted tobacco economist network Part 64 - Non-tobacco output

Overview of previous posts here

Microsoft

The tobacco industry isn't the only industry using think tanks to manipulate the audience. In 1999, the Independent Institute sponsored a full-page advertisement (Open Letter on Antitrust Protectionism) in the Washington Post and the New York Times, signed by 240 economists.

25 of the people signing were members of the Tobacco Institute's economists network.

The letter sounds familiar, it's just the same old call against regulations. The only real question is: were they following their political beliefs, or was the Independent Institue not anly gaining money from the Tobacco industry, but also from Microsoft ? And is it a coincidence in 1998 tobacco network economists William F. Shughart II and Richard B. McKenzie wrote the piece is Microsoft a monopolist? or where they paid to write it ?
 
Well, you probably already guessed it: According to the NYT in 1999 20% of the Independent Institute's funding came from ... Microsoft: 'Unbiased' Ads for Microsoft Came at a Price

Economists for sale ? Or was it pragmatism, and was the Independent Institute just working together with the industry to reach a libertarian objective ?


Alcohol output

By 1995 the tobacco industry was already working with a lot of think tanks and businesses, trying to attack the government on all sorts of environmental sciences



It may or may not be a coincidence, but in 1997 tobacco economist Richard Wagner wrote a chapter on the social cost of alcohol in a book edited by another network member, William F. Shughart II in the book The Taxation of Alcohol and the Control of Social Cost. In Taxing Choice: The Predatory Politics of Fiscal Discrimination.

But even earlier, in 1987, Robert D. Tollison and Robert B. Ekelund, Jr. wrote Economic effects of Geographic Restraints in the Malt Beverage Industry used by Tollison in a hearing before the Subcommittee on Antitrust, Monopolies, and Business Rights of the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, One Hundredth Congress, first session on S. 567 (August 4, 1987).

And more alcohol output in this one: Temporal regulation and intertemporal substitution: The effect of banning alcohol at college football games. by William J. Boyes and Roger L. Faith

It could be a coincidence the tobacco authors suddenly en messa took such interest in alcohol ?


Petroleum industry

After the  Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska (1989) there was serious outrage allover the world. So the industry could use some help, and two tobacco economists stepped in : Alaskas Other Oil Spill. January 1, 1990. Foundation for Economic Education (written by Dwight R. Lee and Stephen L. Jackstadt). 

No, the article is not about oil or protecting the environment. It's the same old story on taxes.

The corrupted tobacco economist network Part 54 - Working with Think tanks

 Overview of previous posts here

Tobacco Employee Roy Marden was one of the tobacco employees responsible for the communication with think tanks. He wrote the following memo, titled Tobacco Strategy on the think tanks he was responsible for (the industry divided the think tanks between a couple of its employees)

(...) (the document is 6p. long)

The tobacco industry sought the help of right-wing think tanks to fight excise taxes.

In 1995, the Tobacco Institute sent a memo, mentioning that the economists still were able to provide op-eds in no less than 30 states. The same memo illustrates how the industry worked with the different think tanks

A similar document was written in 1998, most likely by Roy Marden. Notice how long the list is. It no longer only mentions thinks tanks, but many journalists, and even an actor and a magician (???). It's not clear why the document mentions Dwight R. Lee and Walter Williams, but it is possible Marden was not aware of their membership in the social cost economists network. Do also notice he mentions he's on the board of the Heartland Institute. 

[ETC, the list is a couple of pages long]

While there always have been contacts between the industry and think tanks, and they worked together since at least the 1980's, it was only in the 1990's that the industry's involvement would become so pervasive that one could say the industry 'owned' some of these organizations.

In the long run, think tanks probably were much more powerful allies than a secret network of economists ever could have been.

S. Fred Singer wrote his infamous Alexis De Tocqueville Institution's tobacco-paper in 1994 (see further), with Robert D. Tollison helping him. Tobacco economists were working with the Heartland Institute since at least 1991. The Independent Institute was was joined by many members of the economists' network. In 1994, Tollison and Wagner became members of the Independent Institute's advisory board.

The corrupted tobacco economist network, Part 47 - Post 1998 tobacco output

Overview of previous posts here

Post 1998 output and Richard Wagner's zealotry

Not all economists disappear from the files completely after 1998, but as a part of the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement the Tobacco Institute was dismantled. Some economists must have started working for the other tobacco companies.

In 2000, R. Morris Coats provided testimony similar to that the network had provided. Coats by that time already was working for Philip Morris. At least Coats acknowledged this in his curriculum vitae (no longer online, Coats deceased in 2015), while most of the economists don't mention their work for the tobacco industry. Remarkably Coats' c.v. also notes that his paper A Note on Estimating Cross-Border Effects of State Cigarette Taxes was "Used in testimony before legislatures in New York, West Virginia and Louisiana--based on phone conversations with Tobacco Institute"

William F. Shughart II kept writing op-eds until at least 2010.

An incomplete list of publications written after the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement include:

• Sexton R. (1999): Political Science and Secondhand Smoke, Investor's Business Daily (Feb . 2, 1999)
• Ault, R. Ekelund, R. B., Jackson, J., Saba, R. (2004) : Smokeless tobacco, smoking cessation and harm reduction: an economic analysis, Applied Economics
• Ault, R. W., Beard, T., Jackson, J., Saba, R. (2005) : On the (mis)use of cross-price effects to gauge the effectiveness of smokeless tobacco in smoking cessation, The European Journal of Health Economics 34 (November 2006), pp. 712–730
• Lucassen, R. A., Coats, R. M., Karahan, G. (2005) : Cigarette smuggling mitigates the public health benefits of cigarette taxes. Applied Economics Letters, Taylor and Francis Journals, vol. 12(12)
• Ault, R. W., Jackson, J. D., Saba, R., Ekelund, R. B. (2006) : Smoking cessation, weight gain, and nicotine substitutes : the economics of reducing harm. The southern business & economic journal Vol. 29.2006, 3/4, p. 34-49
• Brown, B. A., Rucker, R. R., Thurman, W. N. (2007) : The End of the Federal Tobacco Program: Economic Impacts of the Deregulation of U.S. Tobacco Production. Review of Agricultural Economics, Winter 2007, 29(4): 635-655. http://www.jstor.org/stable/i412804
• Shughart W. F. (2010) : Tobacco Settlements, in Roger Chapman (ed.), Culture Wars: An Encyclopedia of Issues, Voices, and Viewpoints, vol. 2, Armonk, NY and London: ME Sharpe, 2010

Richard A Wagner's output

Richard E. Wagner provided the most post-1998 output. In 1999 he wrote the article The State as a Partisan Plaintiff: Reflection on the Tobacco Settlement. He also wrote The Tobacco Settlement, as Refracted through the Economics of Litigation, which seems to have been the draft version

A rewritten (?) version of The State as a Partisan Plaintiff: Reflection on the Tobacco Settlement was published in 2000 by the Public Interest Institute (no longer online). It is an example of his extreme viewpoints:

What is a defendant to do when confronted with a subsidized political plaintiff driven by partisan interests and ideological zealotry? The defendant faces an adversary that calculates differently than commercial plaintiffs. A private plaintiff might think in terms of possible excess medical costs imposed by smokers. For a political plaintiff, however, those claims are secondary, a smoke screen to provide cover as it were, for the pursuit of an ideology animated by a vision of a smoke-free America. For the ideological plaintiff, the desired objective is not to offset some (non-existent) drain on state treasuries attributed to smokers, but rather is to degrade the commercial value of tobacco companies. 

One might reasonably wonder why the tobacco companies might have capitulated when the claims lodged against them were so patently false. A man sitting on an iceberg in the North Atlantic as it floats south will recognize his ultimate fate, and yet be thankful when clouds obscure the sun. It is perhaps similar with the tobacco companies. The famous "problem of the gambler’s ruin" from probability theory tells us that in a fair game of chance, the player with the smaller fortune will eventually be ruined by the player with the larger fortune. In ordinary games, of course, play is voluntary, and either party can terminate the play at will. But the state can command participation, and it can exhaust the fortune of anyone against whom it plays. A wise person would not continuously play a fair game of chance against a much wealthier adversary, and similarly would not want to play continuously against a zealous, interest-driven political plaintiff. Settlement is perhaps like that welcome cloud in the North Atlantic. It brings respite to a weary soul, but it does not give peace of mind. 

The general theme illustrated by the tobacco settlement is the danger of being on the opposite side of the partisan use of state power to advance a private interest agenda at public expense. Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, as Patrick Henry noted. And the state is potentially the biggest threat of all. We may well fault the tobacco companies for capitulating against the onslaught of state power. For if everyone did, this liberty would perish. Yet the state as a partisan plaintiff can pursue a strategy of divide-and-conquer against its potential defendants, which may render some such capitulation understandable, even if it can never render it admirable.

In 2004, Wagner wrote Meddlesome Preferences and Rent Extraction: The Tobacco Shakedown, continuing the same themes as above. In 2005, he wrote State Excise Taxation:Horse-and-Buggy Taxes In an Electronic Age, both still attacking excise taxes.

As recently as 2013, Wagner co-authored the paper Taxation as a Quasi-Market Process:Explanation, Exhortation, and the Choice of Analytical Windows

There is no evidence to know if the tobacco industry was still paying Wagner to write these articles, or they were merely expressing his worldview.

Even though he's 79 years old, Richard E. Wagner still is working at George Mason University

The corrupted tobacco economist network, Part 46 - towards the end of the network.

Overview of previous posts here

Towards the end of the network

The industry kept working with economists throughout the 1990's. The same activities as explored iextensively in previous blogposts continued: attending conferences, writing op-eds, appearing at testimony, etc. As there's not much new too learn, I will not go into detail.

Until roughly 1992 the LTDL documents many activities. After that, it becomes increasingly difficult to find anything substantial, and many network members suddenly disappeared from the files. One is money (we'll another reason at the end of this post)

In 1991 the Tobacco Institute faced a budget cut of 1.1 million US$, so one reason is the institute had to downsize certain activities:

(...)

The summary of a June 26, 1991 meeting are revealing the industry did not just improvise and the "that the heart of the current program is the consulting economists who produce the studies, get them published and promote them in academic circles"




(...)

Also in 1991, Tollison and Wagner published their last tobacco book The Economics of Smoking. It is clear the budget did not increase

The same document shows that year the industry had already spent $16,290 and only had a budget of $19,710 left. In the late 1980's the industry had paid the tobacco economists $15,500 to appear at one convention, so the 1992 budget in comparison was minimal. 

Further, around that time, the Tobacco Institute wrote many memoranda complaining about 'going over budget' (not just for the social cost economists), showing the budget cut must have really hurt the Institute. From 1985 to 1991 the economists appeared at economic conferences, but not afterwards.

Many of the original members were dropped around 1991/1992, leaving only an ever smaller core group. The "tax hearing witnesses" list was decreased from an economist in every state to just three economists: Robert D. Tollison, Richard A. Wagner and Dwight R. Lee

In 1993, the Tobacco Institute still suffered from the decreased budget, leading to the Tobacco Institute demanding a new contract with James Savarese





Even though the network kept delivering material until at least 1998, this letter probably marked the final turning point in the functioning of the network. The letter to Savarese was written on the same day as a document announcing the Tobacco Institute's 1994 budget would decrease another 62%

Some members of the network started working for the individual tobacco companies, such as Philip Morris (e.g. Walter E. Williams), R. J. Reynolds (Richard Wagner, from 1994). Tollison on his side started working for British American Tobacco in 1993. The economists may have been too expensive for the reduced budget

Still, in 1994 the Tobacco Institute budgeted $102,000 - $194,000 for the activities of Tollison, Wagner and Lee

From about 1993, the industry shifted to using think tanks (especially the Independent Institute - this will be explored in future blogposts) instead of directly ordering reports from the economists. But it was not the end of the network yet, as the economists still wrote op-eds, and Tollison and Lee still appeared at hearings.

The Tobacco Institute sent a memo in 1995 mentioning that the economic consultants still were able to provide op-eds in no less than 30 states and effectively the economists started organizing an op-ed campaign against FDA-regulations, with 17 economists trying to get published, including a new names (Lowell Gallaway). The industry once again pressed its agenda, and suggested to write on




In 1996, not 17 but 20 op-eds were sent to newspapers. In 1998 the last new name that could be found appears: Gary D. Ferrier wrote an op-ed that year, but there is no indication he ever was formally recruited. His name appears in exactly five documents.

Yet still, despite this last joined effort in 1995 and continued recruitment of new authors, the impression remains after 1992/1993 things went steeply downhill. The sparse documents show a network with less coordination

After some years of legal actions, in 1998, the US government reached the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement. More and more whistleblowers were explaining industry methods, the industry realized it would face trial long before 1998, and knew the authorities would be uncovering the lobbying-tactics and people used by the industry.

It is nearly impossible to find anything relevant to the economists network in the LTDL from 1995 onwards and the documents often stopped giving names. The first attempts to hide names started around 1995, until the 1998 Settlement, after which the industry systematically stopped using names. From that point on, it is impossible to trace the network. In 1995 Savarese and Tollison wrote another proposal for the Tobacco Institute though, proposing several studies, op-eds etc. Amongst the proposals was a $27,500 report that would conclude that a Rand Corporation study in JAMA overestimated the social cost of tobacco. Of course, they knew their conclusion before actually conducting the research.

The early documents always carried the names of the economic consultants and overview of whose op-eds were published, but in 1998 James Savarese simply wrote "payment of $22,000 for "Consulting Services - Op-Ed Project - 1st of 2 payments".

Unlike the documents from the 1980's the invoice does not mention a single name. While the document overviews the published op-eds, it does not mention the names of the authors, only the university where the op-ed was written. Only through the older documents is it still possible at times to link the university with the author. Yet it is clear the Savarese memo differed strongly from those from the 1980's. Remember the 1987 audit, and the industry complaining Savarese withheld some names from the industry? The industry was aware it was under scrutiny in and started culling names...

Even though the network of economic consultants vanished from the LTDL, it seems it did not really cease to exist, but rather the industry adapted communications to the new reality after the Tobacco Masters Settlement Agreement. Thus, it is not possible to detect if the network really ceased to exist or not. The correct title of this chapter therefore perhaps should have been: the end of the traceable network.

Yet another possible reason the industry stopped working with the economists is that it seems people like Tollison and Wagner became very radical, and started writing op-eds with titles like Scientific integrity consumed by anti-smoking zealotry. DEspite this ectreme title, it was cleared by the Tobacco Institute. The same year they wrote a letter tot the editor, stating



In 1999, only a handful of the social consultants signed an open letter to the US Attorney General, defending the tobacco industry. It contained the standard free-market reasoning, wans was signed by 5 network members (Bruce L. Benson, Robert B. Ekelund, Lowell Gallaway, William F. Shughart, II and Walter E. Williams) and some 37 other economists, all of them known for their strong free-market views. By that time (1999), the role of the economists network had already been replaced by tobacco-friendly think tanks, and this letter probably originated somewhere in a think tank, not the Tobacco Institute's economists network.

The corrupted tobacco economist network, Part 44: another example where the 'independent academics' allow the Tobacco Institute to alter the draft versions of their work.

Overview of previous posts here

Office of technology assessment on the costs of smoking: wrong again

In 1993 professors Robert Tollison and Richard Wagner wrote the paper The Office of Technology Assessment on the Costs of Smoking: Wrong Again. It was published by George Mason University's Center for Study of Public Choice. Once again, this was not an independent scientific publication. Tobacco Institute's Calvin George wrote





Everything Tollison and Wagner wrote had to be cleared by the Tobacco Institute's lawyers:

The LTDL shows indeed corrections were made by the industry.

 And yes, these changes do appear in Tollison's final draft

The corrupted tobacco economist network, Part 43: the one with the flawed papers, with revisions made by the Tobacco Institute

Overview of previous posts here

Smoking and workplace efficiency: an assessment of the record

The comments of the Tobacco Institute on paper Smoking and Workplace Efficiency: An Assessment of the Record by Richard Wagner and Kevin Grier again illustrates to what extent the industry provided direction to the economists



[the rest of the document is missing]


Karen Fernicola Suhr was concerned about the validity of the arguments. She seemed to have been one of the few Tobacco Institute's employees who actually cared that the science was somewhat sound, and she was rather critical towards the output of the economists (another example will be given in another chapter below).

A follow-up memorandum from Karen Fernicola Suhr shows Wagner was willing to revise the paper




A few months later, Fernicola Suhr wrote




Even more interesting is the next paragraph




In other words, green light was given to a paper the industry knew to be flawed. Fernicola-Suhr wrote the authors



Richard Wagner and Kevin Grier revised their paper, incorporating the changes wanted by the Tobacco Institute 




Savarese billed $42,500 for the paper. No proof was found the paper ever was published.

The corrupted tobacco economists network - Part 40. More corrections by the Tobacco Institute

Overview of previous posts here

Dedicated taxes: new ways of shearing old sheep

The attack on taxes is illustrated in a 23 p. literature study “Dedicated Taxes: New ways of shearing old sheep" written in 1991 by Robert D. Tollison and Richard E. Wagner

The paper's front page once again highlighted both authors were members of the Center for Study of Public Choice at George Mason.

Nowhere did the paper mention the Tobacco Institute carefully read the text and even changed it where they deemed appropriate. This was not a text written by an independent academic.

The corrupted tobacco economists network: Part 38 - the "scientific" output.

Overview of previous posts here

Scientific output

As stated in a previous post the Tobacco Institute wanted scientific output, because it needed an academic ground to attack social cost. Even when the network was formed, the Tobacco Institute handed out grants.

In 1986 nine economists proposed for the money, though the evaluation of the proposals show James Savarese was not too pleased and Savarese, not the Tobacco Institute, proposed to reject a couple. Savarese's memorandum makes clear the research had to benefit the industry

Henry Butler's proposal was rejected because the industry was not sure his research would be beneficial for the industry

More proof the Tobacco Institute did not tolerate output they disliked can be seen in a 1992 letter to James Savarese setting forth why The Economics of Smoking Bans by William Boyes and Michael Marlow was not funded 

In 1988 the industry must have ordered some social cost papers. The papers had to be reviewed by the Institute's lawyers before clearance. 

.

Again, this is not normal scientific behavior.

Corrupted tobacco economists network, Part 37: the last pro-tobacco book

Overview of previous posts here

The economics of smoking (1991)

The industry paid Tollison and Wagner 87,500 US$ for a revision of "Smoking and the State".

The book was published by Kluwer Publishers in 1991 as "Economics of Smoking: Getting It Right". Notice the prominent place on the front page for the logo of the Center of Public Choice at George Mason University. This is indeed buying academic credibility ?

Again, the plan to promote the book was ready before the book was even published




The pattern is similar to the earlier books so giving more details would not provide new information.

The arguments used in the book often are pretty one sided and weak, e.g. when dealing with the time wasted by cigarette breaks

Who knew that these kind of activities were only done by non-smokers . . .

Corrupted tobacco economists network, Part 36: even more pro-tobacco books

Overview of previous posts here

Charging beneficiaries for public services (1989)

Probably the authors liked the money they made writing books and in 1988, Tollison and Wagner proposed writing a book Public Services: User Charges and Earmarked Taxes in Principle and Practice (notice Wagner uses the letterhead of GMU)


Tobacco Institute employee Martin Gleason wrote (May 31, 1989)

In June, Gleason added

And, in an undated memo

This time Richard Wagner was the lead author, perhaps to give Tollison a bit lower profile as he already led two other tobacco books. Other authors included Gary M Anderson, Bruce Yandle, Dwight R. Lee, Henri Lepage, Mwangi S. Kimenyi, James M. Buchanan and Fred S. McChesney.

The two non-network members are "Nobel Prize" winner James M. Buchanan (his name pops up everywhere in the LTDL, and he was involved in the 1984 workshop leading to the network) and French libertarian economist Henri Lepage (member of several of the same think tanks as the other economists, and a current member of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF)).

Even though Wagner was the first author, Tollison charged the Tobacco Institute

The fourth invoice also charged $36,250, so probably the industry paid $145,000, exactly the amount the authors proposed

Buchanan must have earned more because he held a Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, explaining his high market value: how many politicians would dare to say a Nobel Prize winning economist was wrong on economy ?

It is clear the book was promoted the same way as Smoking and the State

Corrupted tobacco economists network, Part 34: promo-tours all over the USA

Overview of previous posts here

Promo-tours all over the USA

The Ogilvy and Mather promotion plan from previous blogpost effectively was executed and Robert D. Tollison and Richard E. Wagner started making media trips to promote Smoking and the State: Social costs, rent seeking, and public policy, just as the strategy dictated.

In 1992, the industry planned a new media tour to promote the book The Economics of Smoking. The document looks back on the 1988/1989 media tour

Assuming the economists earned at least $3,000 per tour stop (see appendix, to be published at the end of the blogseries), the authors must have earned well over $100,000 (on top of the $20,000 for writing the book).

PR-firm Ogilvy and Mather helped Tollison, giving him advice on how to communicate with the press

And some more advice in another letter

As always, the industry was evaluating the economists

The media tour results pleased the industry as the authors spoke with lots of media. 

In 1995, Tollison and Wagner participated in another media tour, though it is not clear from the LTDL which book they presented. The Economics of Smoking dates from 1992, so there may be a missing publication.  It is not clear also why Tollison and Wagner received more media training from PR-firm Fleishman-Hillard in 1991

The LTDL has some examples of the interviews, showing Tollison’s one sided argumentation

Corrupted tobacco economists network, Part 33: Robert D. Tollison writes more tobacco books

Overview of previous posts here

Robert D. Tollison writes pro-tobaccco books, part III

Smoking and the state (1988)

The executive summary for this book was written by the Public Relations firm Ogilvy and Mather, but the Tobacco Institute did not like their work and rewrote the piece

The book had a clear purpose

Promoting smoking and the state

PR-firm Ogilvy and Mather designed the campaign to promote Tollison's and Wagner's book Smoking and the State: Social costs, rent seeking, and public policy

Tollison and Wagner agreed on the program presented by Ogilvy and Mather

The tobacco industry always tried to hide that it was lobbying with the aid of 'independent' academics. The scientists in the ‘Social Cost’ category usually were strictly separated from the ‘truth squads’ and the witnesses in these programs never appeared at the same place at the same time. This way, the industry wanted to create the illusion that different categories of scientists in non-related fields opposed the government's tobacco-regulations.


Reality was different: both the ‘tax’ and ‘truth squad’ academics took part in media tours set up by the industry. Ogilvy and Mather organized both tours, in one controlled operation and often mentioned both media-tours in one and the same memorandum, e.g. the memorandum written February 15, 1989

Similar notes were written on (small selection): February 1, 1989, on April 11, 1989, on August 17, 1989, etc.

There's one exception to this rule of separating thruth squad and the economists: when the American Medical Association held a meeting and the industry only became aware of this conference one month in advance. Probably because of a time constraint Tollison and David Weeks were touring at the same place and time.

Just as with legislative testimony, the Tobacco Institute did follow up how the scientists coped with their lobbying:

The corrupted tobacco economists network Part 32 - Robert D. Tollison writes pro-tobaccco books (bis)

Overview of previous posts here

Robert D. Tollison writes pro-tobaccco books, part II

Clearing the air (1988)

Clearing the Air: Perspectives on Environmental Tobacco Smoke was presented as a book written by concerned scientists. It is the odd one out, as it was ordered by Philip Morris for their own unstated purposes, not the Tobacco Institute.

Andrew Whist, Senior Vice-president of Philip Morris, wrote this letter on January 7, 1988 to Robert Tollison

Of course Tollison was not an employee, he was an outside consultant. Technically, this makes a difference but at this point Tollison had already received a great deal of money from the Tobacco Institute.

Philip Morris supported the book by handing out some money (same letter)

Even though the book acknowledges it was supported by the industry, when interviewed on television Tollison and Wagner did not exactly mention their connections with the industry.

Video Tollison being interviewed: Video Wagner being interviewed:

The tobacco economists network Part 24 of many

Overview of previous posts here

Overview of meetings

1985
Public Choice Society	William F. Shughart II	Thomas Borcherding	Dwight Lee
	Fred McChesney	Robert D. Tollison
1986
Southwestern Social Science Meeting	Keith Watson	Joseph M. Jadlow	Robert D. Tollison
	Robert Ekelund, Jr.	Richard E. Wagner	Henry N. Butler
Eastern Economic Association Meeting	George E. Hoffer	Robert D. Tollison	Michael D. Pratt
	Gary M. Anderson	William Shughart, II	John H. Bowman
1988
Western Economic Association	Dwight R. Lee	Richard Wagner	Paul W. Wilson
	Thomas Borcherding	Benjamin Zycher
Atlantic Economic Conference	Dwight R. Lee	Richard Wagner	Bruce Yandle
	Robert Staaf
Southern Economic Association	Robert Ekelund Jr.	Dwight R. Lee	Randall Holcombe
	Joseph Jadlow	Henry Butler
1989
Public Choice Society	Robert D. Tollison	Gary M. Anderson	Bruce L. Benson
	Richard Wagner	David Gay	Dwight R. Lee
Southwestern Social Science	Dwight R. Lee	Richard McKenzie	David Gay
	Edward Price	Richard Wagner
Southern Economic Association	Robert B. Ekelund	Richard W. Ault	Keith Watson
	John D. Jackson	Mark Thornton	Henry N. Butler
	Richard Saba	James Savarese
1990
Southern Economic Association	Robert B. Ekelund	Richard W. Ault	Keith Watson
	John D. Jackson	Mark Thornton	Richard Saba
Atlantic Economic Society	Richard Wagner	Dwight R. Lee	Fred McChesney
	Robert Tollison	Kevin Grier	Bruce Yandle
Western Economic Association	Richard Wagner	Daniel P.  Williamson	Dwight R. Lee
	Benjamin Zycher	Gary M. Anderson
1991
Western Economic Association	Richard Wagner	Steve Jackstadt	Dwight R. Lee
	Benjamin Zycher
Southwestern Social Science Association	Robert Ekelund Jr.	Dwight R. Lee	Robert Tollison
	Richard W. Ault	John Keith Watson	John D. Jackson

Apparently, the industry wanted feedback, as there are reports of the meetings, such as one written by Dwight R. Lee and one by Richard Wagner. The reports show  the sessions usually were attended by 20 to 25 people, sometimes only a dozen or fifteen. 

Thus the industry paid a lot (in 1991: $5,000 per economist) to reach virtually no one. Perhaps this is one of the reasons the industry in the 1990's shifted to working with think tanks. The industry also stopped sending economists to these conferences after 1991 becaused the Tobacco Institute faced a $1 million budget cut that year (this will be explored in another blogpost).

There may have been more meetings (there is no LTDL  record of one in 1987) but the point is clear: the LTDL shows us for years the tobacco industry was able to spread its message to non-network economists by using an anti-tax strategy

The purpose of the economists appearing at these meetings was clear: plant a seed, in the hope slowly the arguments would be copied by other economists. Savarese wrote

Daniel P. Williamson attended the Western Economic Association meeting in 1990 as discussant and was paid for his expenses.  A choice the industry probably regretted, as Williamson must not have understood why he was there and criticized the output of the other economists.

Needless to say he does not reappear in the LTDL...