The Effect of Public Policies and Prices on Youth Smoking

This article empirically tests the effects of various tobacco control measures on youth cigarette demand using a 1996 nationally representative survey among U.S. high school students. Our measures of public policies allow more precise estimates of their impact compared to previous studies. The two-part model corrects for heteroscedasticity and features a novel approach to evaluating youth access laws based on actual compliance rates. This resolves the difficulty of measuring their active enforcement, the lack of which is frequently blamed for insignificant findings with respect to their effectiveness. We found youth access laws to have a negative effect on smoking probability. Relatively strong clean indoor air laws may also reduce the probability of smoking. The presence of all tobacco control policies combined and higher cigarette prices lower both smoking participation and smoking intensity. The teen-specific cigarette price has a larger impact on cigarette demand than commonly tested state average price.     

Do Adolescents with Emotional or Behavioral Problems Respond to Cigarette Prices?

Adolescents with mental health problems have much higher rates of smoking than those without such problems. Although a large body of evidence suggests that higher cigarette prices reduce smoking prevalence and the quantity smoked, little is known about the interaction between mental health or behavioral problems and tobacco consumption in the general population or among adolescents. Using a national representative sample of adolescents from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health and employing validated psychiatric measures of emotional distress and behavioral problems, we estimate the price elasticity of cigarette demand for adolescents who have behavioral or emotional problems. The results indicate that these adolescents are at least as responsive to cigarette prices as adolescents with no emotional or behavioral problems.     

Public Policy and Youth Smokeless Tobacco Use

Much is known about the effects of prices and tobacco control policies on cigarette smoking, but little is known about their impact on smokeless tobacco use. This paper uses data from the Monitoring the Future Surveys, augmented with tobacco tax and policy-related measures, to estimate smokeless tobacco demand equations for young males. The estimates indicate that higher smokeless tobacco taxes would significantly reduce the number of young men using smokeless tobacco and the frequency of smokeless tobacco use. In addition, the estimates imply that strong limits on youth access to tobacco products reduce smokeless tobacco use by young males.     

The Intergenerational Consequences of Tobacco Policy: A Review of Policy's Influence on Maternal Smoking and Child Health

The response of pregnant women to tobacco policy is of particular interest due to these women being in a unique position to pass health capital to the next generation. By comparing estimates in the literature, we highlight that while pregnant women are responsive to taxes and taxes improve child health, their responsiveness has declined over time. We show that these trends reflect a compositional change; specifically, the least addicted smokers quit in the 1990s, leaving the pool of smoking mothers to be dominated by less price elastic smokers. Reviewing the literature on other tobacco policies, we show that a state‐level U.S. smoking ban has roughly three times the effect on pregnant women of a 10% increase in prices using elasticity estimates from more recent periods. Throughout this review, we identify areas for improvement in the literature and offer a number of ideas for future research projects.     

Alcohol Prices,Consumption, and Traffic Fatalities

We examine the relationships among alcohol prices, consumption, and traffic fatalities using data across U.S. states from 1982 to 2000. Some previous studies have found large, negative associations between alcohol taxes and fatalities. However, commonly used price data suggest little or no connection between alcohol prices and fatalities. These apparently conflicting findings may result from measurement error and/or endogeneity in the price data, which biases ordinary least squares estimators toward a finding of no price effects. Using alcohol taxes as instrumental variables, fatalities are found to be negatively related to prices. In addition, alcohol consumption is strongly positively related to fatalities. However, biases may still remain, because taxes are not entirely suitable as instruments.     

Optimal population growth and the social welfare function

The social welfare function criterion offers an approach to the theory of optimal economic growth that is intermediate between the 2 most frequently used utilitarian models--those that maximize per capita utility and those that maximize total utility. According to the welfare criterion, societal welfare depends not only on the level of per capita consumption, but also on the population density in the area in which an individual resides. The model postualtes that, for a given level of per capita consumption, total utility increases with increasing density, reaches a maximum, and then declines with further population increases due to the deleterious effect of overcrowding on the quality of life (e.g., the quality of education, recreational facilities, and environmental factors such as clean air and pure water). The overall objective of the model is to identify the optimal per capita consumption and population size that maximize the discounted social welfare. Optimal population growth occurs when the increase in the discounted social welfare resulting from the introduction of a new member equals the reduction in welfare created by that addition (modified Meade Rule), while per capita accumulation equals the sum of the population growth rate and the social rate of time preference (modified Golden Rule). This model could be extended to consider technological change more explicitly and its effect on optimal outcomes.     

基于非参数回归的江苏省用电量分析

基于2000—2019年江苏省用电量和影响因素的数据,运用非参数回归方法探究了一维变量城镇人均住房面积与用电量的关系。结果表明非参数回归方法的拟合效果是很理想的。运用半参数回归模型探究了多维变量人口数量、人均GDP、城镇人均住房面积、农村人均住房面积与用电量的关系。结果表明,人口数量和人均GDP对于江苏省用电量具有显著的参数效应;城镇人均住房面积和农村人均住房面积对于江苏省用电量具有显著的非参数效应;两者之间具有交互作用。     

A diffusion model of long-run state economic development

Most empirical studies of state economic development have been relatively short-term in nature. Here, we examine the causes of growth over a more substantial period of time covering almost six decades. Particular emphasis is placed on the so-called convergence hypothesis. A two-stage methodology originally employed to model the diffusion of new technologies is applied. Results tend to confirm the general convergence of state per capita incomes over time. That is, a large share of the observed variation in state economic growth is explained by initial period incomes, with lower income states growing relatively more rapidly. In addition, we find that low taxes and comparatively strong support for higher education foster more rapid growth.     

Short‐run marginal medical costs from booze and butts: Evidence from the states

This article uses a panel data set of U.S. states over the 1980 to 2007 period to estimate the demands for medical care, cigarettes, and beer. The estimation process generates own‐price, income, and cross‐price elasticities for all three goods. Implied per capita beer and cigarette consumption elasticities of per capita health care expenditures, suggested by our baseline estimates, are 0.83 and 0.14, respectively. These results are robust to a number of specification tests. Simulations suggest that yearly marginal medical costs amount to approximately $12 per bottle and 27 cents per cigarette in the short run (in 2012 dollars). These results are likely to be driven by the much larger corresponding increases in the consumption of binge drinkers and heavy smokers.

相似文献   

Response by Adults to Increases in Cigarette Prices by Sociodemographic Characteristics

Cigarette excise taxes are widely viewed by health economists as an effective tool to reduce cigarette consumption. However, those opposed to increasing cigarette excise taxes often state that the taxes unfairly target certain segments of the population, notably the poor and minorities. Some of this opposition may have been fueled by a lack of understanding of how the tax will affect the health and welfare of various demographic groups of interest. This article provides guidance to policy makers by estimating price elasticities among adults by gender, income, age, and race or ethnicity. Women, adults with income at or below the median income, young adults, African-Americans, and Hispanics are most responsive to cigarette price increases. For example, adults with income at or below the median are more than four times as price-responsive as those with income above the median.     

基于灰色预测法的福建农村居民人均消费研究

扩大内需,启动消费,是拉动国民经济增长的一个重要途径。随着农民生活水平的提高,农村消费市场日益成为一个新的消费增长点,本文通过对1993—2008年福建省农村居民人均实际消费进行分析,利用灰色预测法对福建省农村居民人均实际总消费支出和结构比例、人均名义总消费支出和结构比例的未来趋势进行预测分析。以期为转变消费观念、开拓福建省农村消费市场、制定相关消费政策等方面提供相关决策依据。     

清洁发展机制(CDM)项目在中国区域分布结构——基于中国各省市面板数据的实证研究

清洁发展机制(CDM)是我国实现低碳经济发展的需要。文章考察了我国2007-2012年31个省、市、自治区的CDM项目数量,借鉴离散型非线性模型——负二项式模型,运用面板数据对CDM在中国区域分布结构进行回归分析。结果表明,地区人均GDP、电力消费、第三产业发展水平以及外商投资对CDM项目分布结构存在影响:地区人均GDP和第三产业发展水平对CDM项目分布存在负向影响;电力消费对CDM项目分布存在正向影响;外商投资与CDM项目则存在非线性U型关系。最后,从我国碳减排、碳交易市场建立方面给出政策启示。     

Beer Taxation and Alcohol-Related Traffic Fatalities

Most studies of alcohol-related traffic fatalities find beer taxes to be an important policy variable. This is surprising since beer taxes only have a small impact on consumption and heavy drinkers are the least responsive to prices. This study shows that the tax relationship is not robust across data periods and that it reflects missing variable biases. While lack of control for law enforcement effort does not appear to bias tax coefficients, failure to include determinants of alcohol consumption other than taxes and drinking age and/or factors that simultaneously determine drinking behavior and political support for alcohol taxes apparently do.     

Unhealthy consumption behaviors and their intergenerational persistence: The role of education

As one of the countries sharing the world's largest population of smokers and drinkers, China has been facing serious health-related problems from smoking and drinking in recent decades. This paper attempts to investigate the impact of education on unhealthy consumption behaviors (smoking, binge drinking, and drinking) and their intergenerational persistence, using data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS) for the period from 1991 to 2011. Estimation results suggest that there exists significantly positive intergenerational persistence of unhealthy consumption behaviors in China, and this persistence seems to be higher from the mother than from the father. After introducing two institutional changes as instruments to address the endogeneity problem of education in unhealthy consumption equations, we find that education has a significantly negative impact on smoking and binge drinking according to the results from instrumental variable estimation. Specifically, an additional year of education decreases the probability of smoking and binge drinking by 4.1% and 3.4%, respectively. Although the health effect of drinking is ambiguous, we also find that the likelihood of drinking decreases by 1.6% with one additional schooling year. Interestingly, an additional year of education could counteract intergenerational persistence of smoking and binge drinking from the father, but it has no impact on intergenerational persistence from the mother. Our results suggest that education might be an efficient way to control unhealthy consumption behaviors in China, but it might not be an efficient way to prevent intergenerational persistence of unhealthy consumption behavior from the mother.     

江西省城市化水平时空变化及其经济影响因素分析

运用主因子分析方法确定了城市化综合水平评价模型,对江西省城市化综合水平进行时空分析,并采用灰色关联方法对其时空变化的主要经济驱动因素进行了揭示。研究表明:①江西省城市化综合水平的空间分布具有一定的规律,而其时间变动则体现出南北分异特征;②灰色关联揭示江西省城市化水平时空变化的经济驱动具有多源性,其中人均第二产业产值、在职职工平均工资、人均第一产业产值、人均第三产业产值、人均社会零售额、人均GDP,它们成为江西省城市化水平时空变动的最关键因素。因此,在未来该省城市化进程推进过程中,不仅要关注其工业化水平和城镇居民收入的提高,还应注意农业生产率的提高、第三产业(特别是商业)的充分发展。     

Openness and income disparities: does trade explain the “Mezzogiorno effect”?

We use Italian regional data to answer the question whether trade affects within-country income differentials. In Italy, the more affluent Northern regions trade more with the rest of the world than the poorer ones in the Southern “Mezzogiorno” regions. Prima facie, there is a positive correlation between external trade and per capita income. Studying this relationship empirically requires taking into account the endogenous component of trade. We argue that panel cointegration models can complement instrumental variables techniques to account for the endogeneity of trade in a panel context. Both methods show a positive link between trade openness and the level of income per capita.     

Demographic destiny, per-capita consumption and the Japanese saving-investment balance

In this paper, we revisit the issue of the impact of demographicchange on the Japanese saving investment balance. Using updatedgovernment projections, we show that the ageing of the populationunder way will steadily lower Japan's saving rate from 31 percent of GDP today to 20 per cent of GDP in 2040. Japan's investmentrate will remain close to its current level of 29 per cent.Thus, Japan's saving investment balance, or current account,will steadily decrease from its current level and will turnnegative in 2025. In addition, we project the impact of demographicchange on the evolution of Japanese consumption per capita,or 'living standards'. Despite the population ageing, we projectthat per-capita consumption will grow until 2010. However, undercertain scenarios, consumption per capita falls in most yearsafter 2010.     

The effects of the social norm on cigarette consumption: Evidence from Japan using panel data

Using Japan's prefecture-level panel data from 1989 to 2001, this paper examines the influence of the social norm on a person's smoking behavior when the complementary relationship between smoking and drinking is taken into account. The key findings through a dynamic panel model controlling for unobserved prefecture-specific fixed effects are as follows: (1) influence from others is stronger when people live more closely and cohesively. A tightly knit society results in a reduction of smoking through smoking-related interaction. (2) Smoking and drinking have a complementary relationship: greater initial consumption of alcohol results in larger consumption of cigarettes. (3) The complementary relationship between smoking and drinking is attenuated if the cost of committing the annoying conduct (i.e., smoking) is high.Overall, this empirical study provides evidence that the psychological effect of the presence of surrounding people has a direct significant effect upon smoking behavior and, furthermore, that it attenuates the complementary relationship between smoking and drinking, thereby reducing cigarette consumption. These results indicate that not only formal rules but also tacitly formed informal norms are effective deterrents to smoking.     

基于扩展的STIRPAT模型的新疆碳排放量的影响因素研究

基于扩展的STIRPAT模型,采用新疆1990~2010年统计数据,对新疆碳排放量的主要影响因素进行了实证研究。研究表明,当新疆人均GDP、能源强度、单位能耗碳排放量、人口规模每提高1%时,碳排放总量增长率将分别增长1.938%、1.233%、0.346%、0.329%。当新疆人均GDP、能源强度、单位能耗碳排放量每提高1%时,人均碳排放量增长率将分别增长2.742%、1.713%、0.477%。     

电力消费和经济增长：来自中国的证据

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