Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/69401 
Year of Publication: 
2013
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 7177
Publisher: 
Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), Bonn
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.
Subjects: 
smoking bans
cigarette prices
life satisfaction
addiction
self-control
tobacco control policies
JEL: 
D03
D62
I18
K32
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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