We analyze a unique data set detailing the financial activities of a drug-selling street gang on a monthly basis over a four-year period in the recent past. The data, originally compiled by the gang leader to aid in managing the organization, contain detailed information on both the sources of revenues (e.g. drug sales, extortion) and expenditures (e.g costs of drugs sold, weapons, tribute to the central gang organization, wages paid to various levels of the gang). Street-level drug dealing appears to be less lucrative than is generally thought. We estimate the average wage in the organization to rise from roughly $6 per hour to $11 per hour over the time period studied. The distribution of wages, however, is extremely skewed. Gang leaders earn far more than they could in the legitimate sector, but the actual street-level dealers appear to earn less than the minimum wage throughout most of our sample, in spite of the substantial risks associated with such activities (the annual violent death rate in our sample is 0.07). There is some evidence consistent both with compensating differentials and efficiency wages. The markup on drugs suggests that the gang has substantial local market power. Gang wars appear to have an important strategic component: violence on another gang’s turf shifts demand away from that area. The gang we observe responds to such attacks by pricing below marginal cost, suggesting

Abstract not found

details about the project can be found at

A series of research monographs exploring key issues in current literature and summarising the latest developments in the fields of creativity and learning. A survey of the literature reporting on the history, theory and practice of school change. Professor Thomson offers a serious and robust review of change theory which should be of use to all practitioners and educators with ambitions to effect structural and systemic change. She considers the reasons why people engage in school change and the main processes describing how such change occurs. She questions assumptions about the purpose of change as well as getting us to think about how we evaluate change and demonstrate its permanence.

The term gated communities for most people conjures up images of exclusive developments with fancy homes and equally fancy lifestyles. At the gates stand guards who screen all nonresidents or the uninvited. Much of the popular and academic literature on gated communities promotes this view (see Garreau 1991; Blakely and Snyder 1997; Lang and Danielsen 1997; Stark 1998; Low 2003). These authors also focus on how some gated communities closely control the lives of residents, including extreme examples such as limiting the number of guests allowed to parties or the types of vehicles that one can park in a driveway. Gated communities are also easy targets for social critics who point to their walls as the physical manifestation of a long-standing exclusionary impulse among rich people to shut out the less fortunate (including a big chunk of the middle class) (Guterson 1992, 1993). Such criticism extends to popular culture, including an X-Files episode several years ago where a monster eats those who fail to follow the homeowners ’ association rules or a Twilight Zone episode where unruly teenagers are turned into fertilizer. While much of the attention has focused on the demographic characteristics and

On behalf of:

© 2004 by the authors. The University of California has a non-exclusive license to use, publish or republish, or otherwise disseminate this document. The research reported in this document was supported with funds generously provided by

Copyright (2005) by

There are certain social tasks which the market generally tends to fulfill. It co-ordinates decisions of widely dispersed individuals and enterprises without demanding endless hours of negotiations. It provides individuals with the opportunity to express their economic preferences in a direct fashion (subject, of course, to income constraints). It provides enterprises with

The gay, lesbian, and queer population is a marginalized group, but its concerns are not marginal to planning. It is a sizable group, heterogeneous (not least in income), and growing in visibility. This article examines the implications for planning practice of the emergence of gay men, lesbians, and related nonconformist groups. Most of the research that is easily applied to planning practice has focused on residential enclaves and neighborhoods. Work is also starting to appear on zoning and housing, business development including tourism, historic preservation, and the use of public space. This article examines the implications for planning practice of the emergence of gay men, lesbians, and related nonconformist groups. Since the mid 1970s, there has been a growing and methodologically sophisticated analysis of this increasingly visible population