Smoking Bans, Cigarette Prices and Life Satisfaction

49 Pages Posted: 2 Feb 2013

See all articles by Reto Odermatt

Reto Odermatt

University of Basel

Alois Stutzer

University of Basel; IZA Institute of Labor Economics

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: smoking bans, cigarette prices, life satisfaction, addiction, self-control, tobacco control policies

JEL Classification: D03, D62, I18, K32

Suggested Citation

Odermatt, Reto and Stutzer, Alois, Smoking Bans, Cigarette Prices and Life Satisfaction. IZA Discussion Paper No. 7177, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2210837 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2210837

Reto Odermatt (Contact Author)

University of Basel

Alois Stutzer

University of Basel ( email )

Faculty of Business and Economics
Peter Merian-Weg 6
4002 Basel
Switzerland
0041 61 207 3361 (Phone)

HOME PAGE: http://www.wwz.unibas.ch/en/stutzer/

IZA Institute of Labor Economics

P.O. Box 7240
Bonn, D-53072
Germany

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