Tobacco and Alcohol: Complements or Substitutes? A Structural Model Approach

Harald Tauchmann, Silja Göhlmann, Till Requate () and Christoph Schmidt
Additional contact information
Silja Göhlmann: RWI
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Silja Goehlmann

No 3412, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: The question of whether two drugs – namely alcohol and tobacco – are used as complements or substitutes is of crucial interest if side-effects of anti-smoking policies are considered. Numerous papers have empirically addressed this issue by estimating demand systems for alcohol and tobacco and subsequently calculating cross-price effects. However, this traditional approach often is seriously hampered by insufficient price-variation observed in survey data. We therefore suggest an alternative instrumental variables approach that statistically mimics an experimental study and does not rely on prices as explanatory variables. This approach is applied to German survey data. Our estimation results suggest that a reduction in tobacco consumption results in a moderate reduction in alcohol consumption. It is shown theoretically that this implies that alcohol and tobacco are complements. Hence, we conclude that successful anti-smoking policies will not result in the unintended side-effect of an increased (ab)use of alcohol.

Keywords: insufficient price-variation; instrumental variables approach; complements or substitutes; tobacco and alcohol; interdependence in consumption (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C31 D12 I12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 38 pages
Date: 2008-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec, nep-hea and nep-mkt
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Published - published online as 'Tobacco and Alcohol: Complements or Substitutes? A Structural Model Approach to Insufficient Price Variation in Individual-Level Data' in: Empirical Economics, 2013, 45(1), 539-566

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp3412.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Tobacco and Alcohol: Complements or Substitutes? A Structural Model Approach (2008)
Working Paper: Tobacco and Alcohol: Complements or Substitutes? – A Structural Model Approach (2007)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp3412

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().