How important are tobacco prices in the propensity to start and quit smoking? An analysis of smoking histories from the Spanish National Health Survey

Ángel López Nicolás ()

Economics Working Papers from Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra

Abstract: This paper analyses the effect of tobacco prices on the propensity to start and quit smoking using a pool of the 1993, 1995 and 1997 editions of the Spanish National Health Surveys. The estimates for several parametric models of the hazard rate for starting and quitting suggest that i) The public health measures applied as of 1992 have had a significative effect on both reducing the hazard of starting and increasing the hazard of quitting, ii) Prices have a very weak effect on the hazard of starting in the male population and no significant effect in the female population, iii) The price floor of cigarrettes, proxied by the average price of a pack of black cigarrettes, has a significant effect on the quitting hazard which is robust across specifications and applies to both men and women. The implied price elasticity of the time up to quitting is situated around -1.4.

Keywords: Smoking; taxes; health; care (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C5 D12 H3 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2001-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://econ-papers.upf.edu/papers/548.pdf Whole Paper (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: How important are tobacco prices in the propensity to start and quit smoking? An analysis of smoking histories from the Spanish National Health Survey (2002)
Working Paper: How important are tobacco prices in the propensity to start and quit smoking? An analysis of smoking histories from the Spanish National Health Survey (2001)
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:upf:upfgen:548

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Economics Working Papers from Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).