We use data from the Tobacco Use Supplements to the Current Population Survey from 2006-2015 to calculate cigarette price elasticities of demand using four alternative cigarette tax/price measures that compensate for the local tax environment to various extents. We use both state-level prices...

The elasticity is an important measure impacting on a form's revenue. Hence, it is important for a firm to know how the proposed change in price of its product can affect its total revenue, when the product is to be sold in the new market condition at the new price. In this context, the measure...

We consider a firm that sells a product over T periods without knowing the demand function. The firm sequentially sets prices to earn revenue and to learn the underlying demand function simultaneously. In practice, this problem is commonly solved via greedy iterative least squares (GILS). At...

The consumer price responsiveness of driving demand is central to the welfare consequences of fuel price changes. This study uses rich data covering the entire population of vehicles and consumers in Denmark to find a medium-run price elasticity of driving of -0.30. We uncover an important...

This study examines the patterns and causes of shortages in generic non-injectable drugs (e.g., tablets and topicals) in the United States. While shortages for injectable drugs have garnered more attention, shortages of other forms of prescription drugs have also been on the increase. In fact,...

We study the identification of oil shocks in a structural vector autoregressive (SVAR) model of the oil market. First, we show that the cross-equation restrictions of a SVAR impose a nonlinear relation between the short-run price elasticities of oil supply and oil demand. This relation implies...

Empirical evidence on the response of German households to electricity price changes is sparse. Using panel data originating from Germany's Residential Energy Consumption Survey (GRECS), we fill this void by employing an instrumental variable approach to cope with the endogeneity of the...

The Department of Homeland Security estimates that 11.4 million undocumented persons reside in the United States. Congress and President Obama are considering a number of proposals to regularize the status of the undocumented population and provide a “path to citizenship.” Any future change...