We estimate the causal impact of school smoking bans in Germany on the propensity and intensity of smoking. Using representative longitudinal data, we use variation in state, year, age cohort, school track, and survey time for implementation of such smoking bans to identify the effects of...

In this paper I unify the economic theories of addiction and health deficit accumulation and develop a life cycle theory in which individuals take into account the fact that the consumption of addictive goods reduces their health and longevity. I distinguish two types of addiction: perfect and...

In this paper, we use data from the German Socio-Economic Panel to investigate the effect on cigarette consumption of macro-economic conditions in the form of regional unemployment rates. The results from our panel data models, several of which control for selection bias, indicate that the...

We investigate sources of educational differences in smoking. Using a large German data set containing retrospective information on the age at smoking onset, we compare age-specific hazard rates of starting smoking between (future) low and high educated individuals. We and that up to 90% of the...

This study presents a new view on the association between education and longevity. In contrast to the earlier literature, which focused on inefficient health behavior of the less educated, we investigate the extent to which the education gradient can be explained by fully rational and efficient...

The gaming economy has expanded rapidly in East Asia over the past decade. Despite the known public health hazards of secondhand smoking, smoking bans in casinos remain controversial due to concerns over the potential economic harm to casino firms. Applying an event study, the authors examine...

Intergenerational correlations of risky health behaviors such as tobacco consumption are well established. However, there is still limited empirical evidence about the underlying process through which the transmission is driven. This paper aims at analyzing parental time discounting and its role...

In this article, we investigate the differences in smoking behavior between male Turkish immigrants and male Germans, using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP). More specifically, we use a Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition method for count data models, and isolate differences in the...

Despite plausible mechanisms, little research has evaluated potential changes in health behaviors as a result of the Medicaid expansions of the 1980s and 1990s. In this paper, we provide the first national study of the effects of Medicaid on health behaviors for pregnant women, which is a group...

This paper considers the long-term effects of smoking on disability retirement. Exploiting population-wide registry data from Sweden, we contribute to the literature by accounting for a much broader range of potential confounders. In particular, by the use of sibling and twin fixed effects, we...

The gaming economy has expanded rapidly in East Asia during the past decade. Despite the public health hazards of Second Hand Smoking (SHS), smoking bans in casinos remain controversial due to concerns over potential economic losses for casino firms. Applying an event study method, the authors...

This paper investigates how legal cannabis access affects student performance. Identification comes from an exceptional policy introduced in the city of Maastricht which discriminated legal access based on individuals’ nationality. We apply a difference-in-difference approach using...

Using data from the state and national Youth Risk Behavior Surveys for the period 1991-2005, Carpenter and Cook (2008) found a strong, negative relationship between cigarette taxes and youth smoking. We revisit this relationship using four additional waves of YRBS data (2007, 2009, 2011, and...

In this paper we look at the relationship between health and income as mediated by "lifestyle" choices; that is, a set of behaviours which are thought to influence health and are generally considered to invoke a substantial degree of free choice. The main underlying assumption is that...

This paper investigates the relationship between health insurance coverage and risky health behaviors among young adults using the confidential version of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, 1997 Cohort (NLSY97). Before the Affordable Care Act required all employers to provide health...

Die Tabaksteuer soll die externen Kosten des Tabakkonsums internalisieren. Mithilfe einer Längsschnittbetrachtung von Querschnittsdaten werden erstmals die extern anfallenden Nettokosten des Rauchens in Deutschland saldiert. Im Ergebnis führt Rauchen netto eher zu einer Entlastung als einer...

This paper investigates how legal cannabis access affects student performance. Identification comes from an exceptional policy introduced in the city of Maastricht which discriminated legal access based on individuals' nationality. We apply a difference-in-difference approach using...