Smoking Bans in the Presence of Social Interaction

Christian Bauer () and Jörg Lingens

Discussion Papers in Economics from University of Munich, Department of Economics

Abstract: This paper analyzes the welfare effects of a public smoking ban in bars. We construct a model that captures crucial features of bar life: competing bars, social interaction, and heterogenous preferences for a smoking ban. Smokers and non-smokers simultaneously choose a bar given their preferences for meeting other people. Bars anticipate the behavior of individuals and choose the smoking regime strategically. Since the (dis)utility from smoking and social interaction are substitutes, the smoking regime is a stronger coordination device if the disutility from smoking is large. If all bars allow smoking in equilibrium, a public smoking ban enhances welfare.

Keywords: Smoking Ban; Social Interaction; Coordination Game (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D61 I18 L13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009-05-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-soc
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://epub.ub.uni-muenchen.de/10593/1/Bans_muc.pdf (application/pdf)

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:lmu:muenec:10593

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Discussion Papers in Economics from University of Munich, Department of Economics Ludwigstr. 28, 80539 Munich, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Tamilla Benkelberg ().