We investigate how changes in federal and state minimum wages affect body mass index and the probability of obesity using data from the 1990 through 2008 waves of the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System. After controlling for unobserved trends at the state level we find that, in contrast...

For those looking to design policies that mitigate the deleterious consequences of alcohol abuse, understanding how consumer demand for alcohol responds to changes in the local economic conditions is of great importance. We use high-frequency purchase data from a large panel of U.S. households...

This paper estimates effects of e-cigarette taxes enacted in eight states and two large counties on e-cigarette prices, e-cigarette sales, and sales of other tobacco products. We use NielsenIQ Retail Scanner data from 2011 to 2017, comprising approximately 35,000 retailers nationally, and...

A motivation for increasing health insurance coverage is to improve health outcomes for impacted populations. However, health insurance coverage may alternatively increase risky health behaviors due to ex ante moral hazard, and past research on this issue has led to mixed conclusions. This paper...