To shed new light on the role private profit incentives play in promoting public health, in this paper we conduct an empirical study of the impact of pharmaceutical industry advertising on smoking cessation decisions. We link survey data on individual smokers with an archive of magazine...

We study the impact of smoking cessation product advertising. To measure potential exposure, we link survey data on magazine-reading habits and smoking behavior with an archive of print advertisements. We find that smokers who are exposed to more advertising are more likely to attempt to quit...