Smoking Bans, Cigarette Prices and Life Satisfaction

Reto Odermatt and Alois Stutzer

CREMA Working Paper Series from Center for Research in Economics, Management and the Arts (CREMA)

Abstract: The consequences of tobacco control policies for individual welfare are difficult to assess, even more so when related consumption choices challenge people's willpower. We therefore evaluate the impact of smoking bans and cigarette prices on subjective well-being by analyzing data for 40 European countries and regions between 1990 and 2011. We exploit the staggered introduction of bans and apply an imputation strategy to study the effect of anti-smoking policies on people with different propensities to smoke. We find that higher cigarette prices reduce the life satisfaction of likely smokers. Overall, smoking bans are barely related to subjective well-being, but increase the life satisfaction of smokers who would like to quit smoking. The latter finding is consistent with cue-triggered models of addiction and the idea of bans as self-control devices.

Keywords: Smoking bans; cigarette prices; life satisfaction; addiction; self-control (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D03 D62 H25 H30 I18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hap, nep-hea and nep-ltv
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (33)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Smoking bans, cigarette prices and life satisfaction (2015)
Working Paper: Smoking Bans, Cigarette Prices and Life Satisfaction (2014)
Working Paper: Smoking bans, cigarette prices and life satisfaction (2013)
Working Paper: Smoking Bans, Cigarette Prices and Life Satisfaction (2013)
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