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 35: buying fake book reviews from the other network members

Overview of previous posts here

Buying positive book reviews

Media tours were not the only way Smoking and the State: Social costs, rent seeking, and public policy was promoted, the industry also wanted favorable book reviews. So once again the network economists began writing. James Savarese wrote

The economists did what they were asked

(etc...)

Of course, the economists' work first was checked for the right wording. The phrase "Most would sanction the government warning tobacco users of the health consequences of their habit" in Cecil Bohanon's review did not please the industry, so they added a word

A similar edit was made in the draft written by Ryan C. Amacher. Notice the similarity in handwriting. These edits were made by the Tobacco Institute. The edits appeared in Amacher's final version, published in The State, Columbia, S .C., Sunday, August 14, 1988

 

Adding a word sometimes was not enough

The same document also shows the Tobacco Institute's lawyers had to review the paper before it could be sent to the newspapers. Not all reviews were published though

November 29, 1998, James Savarese sent the following invoice to the Tobacco Institute

Seventeen economists were asked to write a review. Assuming everyone writing a review got paid, every economist earned around $3.500 for writing a review. Calculated otherwise, the industry paid some $2.000 per page written.

TI president Samuel D. Chilcote reported to the members of the TI executive committee

Clearing and the Air was translated into French, German Spanish, Finnish and Japanese