High times: The effect of medical marijuana laws on student time use

Luke Yu-Wei Chu and Seth Gershenson

No 19417, Working Paper Series from Victoria University of Wellington, School of Economics and Finance

Abstract: Medical marijuana laws (MMLs) represent a major change of marijuana policy in the U.S. Previous research shows that these laws increase marijuana use among adults. In this paper, we estimate the effects of MMLs on secondary and post-secondary students’ time use using data from the American Time Use Survey. We apply a difference-in-differences research design and estimate flexible fixed effects models that condition on state fixed effects and state-specific time trends. We find no effect of MMLs on secondary students’ time use. However, we find that college students in MML states spend approximately 20% less time on education-related activities and 20% more time on leisure activities than their counterparts in non-MML states. These behavioral responses largely occur during weekends and summer when students have more spare time. Finally, the impacts of MMLs are heterogeneous and stronger among part-time college students, who are more likely to be first-generation college goers and to come from underrepresented racial and ethnic groups.

Keywords: Time use; Medical marijuana; Unintended consequences (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://ir.wgtn.ac.nz/handle/123456789/19417

Related works:
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:vuw:vuwecf:19417

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Paper Series from Victoria University of Wellington, School of Economics and Finance Alice Fong, Administrator, School of Economics and Finance, Victoria Business School, Victoria University of Wellington, PO Box 600 Wellington, New Zealand. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Library Technology Services ().