Gambling
The UK's fastest-moving regulatory frontier. Alan tracks how licensing, stake limits, affordability checks and advertising restrictions change what people play, where they play and who gets hurt.
Writer & Researcher Harm-Based Regulation
Studying the markets the state won't leave alone.
Alan Jenkins writes about how government intervention reshapes consumer behaviour in the UK's most heavily regulated markets, with gambling, tobacco and alcohol as his core focus.
About Alan
Alan Jenkins is a British writer and researcher specialising in harm-based regulation, consumer finance and public health economics. A graduate in Economics & Management from the University of Oxford, he examines how government intervention reshapes consumer behaviour in the UK's most heavily regulated markets.
He is drawn to these sectors because they offer a live natural experiment in market regulation: large, data-rich consumer industries where questions of consumer welfare, black-market substitution, advertising ethics and corporate responsibility all interact in measurable ways.
Originally from Charlbury in West Oxfordshire, Alan publishes his research and commentary here at alanjenkins.info and can be found online as @aljenkinsuk.
- Education
- Economics & Management, University of Oxford
- From
- Charlbury, West Oxfordshire
- Focus
- Gambling, tobacco and alcohol regulation
- Online
- @aljenkinsuk
Core sectors
Three consumer industries where the rules change fastest, the data runs deepest and the stakes for households are highest.
Tobacco
Decades of duty escalators, plain packaging and smoking bans make tobacco the longest-running case study in harm-based regulation, and a warning about what illicit supply does when prices climb.
Alcohol
Minimum unit pricing, licensing hours and marketing codes: alcohol shows how regulators balance consumer freedom, industry interests and public health in the most everyday of purchases.
A live natural experiment
Every duty rise, advertising ban and licensing change is a measurable shock to a large consumer market. Four questions run through all of Alan's work:
Consumer welfare
Who gains and who loses when the state changes the rules, and how do the benefits and harms distribute across households?
Black-market substitution
When legal products become dearer or harder to reach, how much demand quietly moves to illicit and unregulated supply?
Advertising ethics
What marketing is acceptable for products that can harm, and do restrictions genuinely change behaviour or simply move it?
Corporate responsibility
Can operators profit responsibly in harm-prone markets, and what do their incentives do to compliance in practice?