How malleable is alcohol consumption? Specifically, how much is alcohol consumption driven by the current environment versus individual characteristics? To answer this question, we analyze changes in alcohol purchases when consumers move from one state to another in the United States. We find...

The Food and Drug Administration has proposed to prohibit menthol cigarettes, which are smoked by almost 19 million people in the U.S. Illegal markets for menthol cigarettes could not only blunt the prohibition's intended consequence to reduce smoking but could also lead to unintended...

Housing expense inflation has historically averaged an annual growth rate of 3.0 percent. However, starting in early 2021 housing expense inflation surged, peaking at 8.2 percent by March 2023. Substance use also increased concurrently. This study investigates the impact of rising housing...

Newborn health is an important component in the chain of intergenerational transmission of disadvantage. This paper contributes to the literature on the determinants of health at birth in two ways. First, we analyze the role of maternal endowments and investments (education and smoking in...

This paper analyzes the determinants of health insurance enrollment and health expenditure in Ghana using micro data from wave 7 of the Ghana Living Standards Survey (GLSS 7) with emphasis on the role of risk preferences and the availability of health facilities in one's own community. It is...

Bias among health care providers can lead to poor-quality care and poor health outcomes, and it can exacerbate disparities. We use a randomized controlled trial to evaluate an intervention to reduce family planning provider bias towards young women in 227 clinics in Tanzania, Burkina Faso, and...

Nutritional disparities across socioeconomic groups contribute to health inequality in the U.S. This paper studies the role of heterogeneous consumer preferences in food choices and explores pricing policies that can promote healthier eating among disadvantaged consumers. Using detailed...

I discuss economic approaches to the demand for harmfully addictive substances and estimate time-series demand functions for the period from 1975 through 2003. My estimates suggest that changes in price can explain a good deal of the observed changes in cigarette smoking, binge alcohol drinking,...

Recent studies analyzing the effects of religion on various economic, social, health and political outcomes have been largely associational. Although some attempts have been made to establish causation using instrument variable (IV) or difference-in-difference (DID) methods, the instruments and...

The purpose of this paper is to estimate the effect that mental illness has on the demand for addictive goods. Mental illness could affect the level of consumption of addictive goods and could affect the price elasticities of addictive goods. Demand theory suggests that mental illness would...