In this paper we estimate the demand for alcoholic beverages in Italy following the rational addiction framework by Becker and Murphy (1988) and using a GMM estimator. To increase confidence in the reliability of this framework we use two different data sets: (i) a time series of annual...

This paper presents the first ever statistical reconstruction of annual tobacco consumption in Italy from 1871 to 2010. The time series of total tobacco is disaggregated into its four major components (cigars, cigarettes, cut tobacco, and snuff), both in physical and monetary term. Our task was...

A pseudo-panel of Italian single households is used to test for rational addiction in alcohol consumption. These monthly consumption data raise problems of measurement errors and unobservable heterogeneity. To deal with the zeros in the dependent variable we adopt a specification based on...

This paper adopts a multi-commodity habit formation model to study whether unhealthy behaviours are related, i.e. whether there are contemporaneous and inter temporal complementarities in Italian consumption of alcohol and tobacco. Own and crossprice elasticities, as well as the income...

A panel of Italian single households is used to test for rational addiction in alcohol consumption. These monthly consumption data raise problems of measurement errors and unobservable heterogeneity. To deal with the zeros in the dependent variable we adopt a specification based on infrequency...

This paper deals with one of the main theoretical and empirical problems associated with the rational addiction model, namely that the demand equation derived from the rational addiction theory is not empirically distinguishable from models with forward-looking behavior, but with...

Public R&D stock is considered as quasi-fixed input in a variable cost function. Its shadow price allows to measure the long run optimal level thus explicitly assessing the hypothesis of under (over) investment. Two alternative R&D prices are defined depending on whether the social or private...

This paper aims at investigating the price-induced innovation hypothesis in Italian agriculture over the years 1951 to 1991. Price-inducement hypothesis is analysed and tested within the framework proposed by Peeters and Surry (2000). The major difference is the short-run specification of the...

The public R&D capital stock is introduced as a quasi-fixed input in a variable cost function. The relative shadow price allows the correct measurement of the equilibrium levels of quasi-fixed inputs thus explicitly assessing the hypothesis of public R&D under (over) investment. By introducing...