The Demand for Tobacco in Post-Unification Italy

Carlo Ciccarelli () and Gianni De Fraja

No 31, Quaderni di storia economica (Economic History Working Papers) from Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area

Abstract: This paper studies the demand for tobacco products in post-unification Italy. We construct a very detailed panel dataset of annual consumption in the 69 Italian provinces from 1871 to 1913, which is then used to estimate the demand for tobacco products. We find support for the Becker and Murphy (1988) rational addiction model. We also find that, in the period considered, tobacco was a normal good in Italy: aggregate tobacco consumption increased with income. Subsequently, we consider separately the four types of products which comprise aggregate tobacco (fine-cut tobacco, snuff, cigars, and cigarettes), and tentatively suggest that habit formation was a stronger factor in the persistence of consumption than physical addiction. The paper ends by showing that the introduction of the Bonsack cigarette rolling machine in the early 1890s did not coincide with changes in the structure of the demand for tobacco, suggesting cost-driven technological change.

Keywords: smoking; Italian Kingdom; rational addiction; panel data (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D11 I18 N33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea and nep-his
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.bancaditalia.it/pubblicazioni/quaderni ... .htmlpage.language=1 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The demand for tobacco in post-unification Italy (2014)
Working Paper: The Demand for Tobacco in Post-Unification Italy (2012)
Working Paper: The Demand for Tobacco in Post-Unification Italy (2012)
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:bdi:workqs:qse_31

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Quaderni di storia economica (Economic History Working Papers) from Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().