Smoking Bans, Cigarette Prices and Life Satisfaction

Reto Odermatt and Alois Stutzer

No 7177, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: The consequences of tobacco control policies for individual welfare are difficult to assess. 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 not related to subjective well-being, but increase the life satisfaction of smokers who recently failed to quit smoking. The latter finding is consistent with cue-triggered models of addiction and the idea of bans as self-control devices.

Keywords: tobacco control policies; smoking bans; cigarette prices; life satisfaction; addiction; self-control (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D03 D62 I18 K32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 49 pages
Date: 2013-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hap, nep-hea and nep-ltv
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Forthcoming - published in: Journal of Health Economics, 2015, 44, 176-194

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