3 research outputs found
What Can We Learn about Smoking from 150 Years of Italian Data?
This paper estimates dynamic demand models for tobacco consumption
in Italy from 1871 to 2010. The empirical analysis is based on an entirely new dataset.
Because the tobacco sector was mostly managed by the state, rich and detailed
historical documentation is available. Price elasticities are estimated both for aggregate
tobacco consumption and its four major components (cigars, cigarettes, cut to- 25
bacco, and snuff) for three separate sub-periods: 1871–1913, 1919–1939, and
1946–2010. Elasticities consistently belong to a narrow set. We discuss the public
policy implications of a seemingly iso-elastic tobacco demand function