Addiction and Smoking Behaviour in Italy

Since the end of the eighties the Becker and Murphy model of rational addiction has been the dominant approach to estimate addiction e ects. The main implication of the model is that public policy, in principle, should not interfere with a fully rational behaviour. However, the additional public health care costs smokers impose on non smokers could be internalised using price mechanisms, as the long run price elasticity of demand is supposed to be, according to this model, significantly higher than the short run one and higher than that obtained from alternative models of addiction, such as the habit persistence model. In this paper we estimate the demand for Tobacco and related products in Italy using PANEL data supplied by ISTAT for the twenty Italian regions. The rational addiction model is used to estimate addiction e ects following the methodological approach suggested by Baltagi and Levin (2001). The myopic addiction model is also estimated as an alternative way of modelling addiction e ects. These data seem to support the rational addiction model, although the results are not clearcut. We have thus estimated the same models using Time Series of per-capita Households Tobacco expenditures from the Italian National Accounts. In this case, the data strongly support the Rational Addiction model and produce elasticities in line with similar case studies.

The Economic Impact of Clean Indoor Air Laws: A Review of Alternative Approaches and of Empirical findings

This paper surveys existing approaches and empirical results to estimating the impact of Clean Indoor Air Laws on smoking behaviour, on the one hand, and on the hospitality industry, on the other. The purpose is twofold: first, identifying important gaps, if any, in the literature that could be addressed in future research; second, trying to unfold the reasons of the wide heterogeneity in the results and, as a consequence, to provide an assessment of the reliability of those results. The discussion begins with a look at the recent regulations that motivate the study of the impact of Clean Indoor Air Laws, with a special emphasis on European smoking bans. This is followed by critical reviews of studies and approaches to estimating the economic impact of Clean Indoor Air Laws. We can distinguish between a direct and an indirect effect of anti-smoking regulations: the direct effect on smoking behaviour and the indirect effect on the economic performance of the hospitality industry. The first review assesses those studies and approaches that have focused on the direct impact on smoking behaviour. The second review analyzes estimation of the economic impact on the hospitality industry. At the end of each of the two broad reviews, we summarize a selection of the empirical findings. The fifth section explores methodological differences and problems that may affect the empirical analysis reviewed in the previous sections with the purpose of shedding light on the wide heterogeneity in the empirical findings. The concluding section asks whether the studies reviewed in this paper place us in a better position to assess the economic impact of Clean Indoor Air Lawssmoking bans, smoking participation, smoking consumption

Addiction and the Interaction between Alcohol and Tobacco Consumption

This paper adopts a multi-commodity habit formation model to study whether unhealthy behaviours are related, i.e. whether there are contemporaneous and inter temporal complementarities in Italian consumption of alcohol and tobacco. Own and crossprice elasticities, as well as the income elasticities, are calculated from the parameters of a semi-reduced system estimated on aggregate annual time series for alcohol and tobacco expenditures over the period 1960-2002. Own price elasticities are negative and tobacco appears to be more responsive than alcohol demand, although both responses are less than unity. Cross price elasticities are also negative and asymmetric showing that alcohol and tobacco are complements. Whereby a ”double dividend” could then be exploited, because public policy needs to tackle the consumption of one good only to control the demand of both. The asymmetry in the values of the cross price elasticities coupled with the relative magnitude of the own price responses suggest that the optimal strategy for maximizing public revenues through increases in ”sin” goods excise taxation would be to raise alcohol taxation more than tobacco. Finally, past consumption of one addictive good does not significantly reinforce current consumption of the other addictive goodaddiction models; sin goods; GMM estimator

Equivalence Scales Declining with Expenditure: Evidence and Implications for Income Distribution

We estimate expenditure dependent equivalence scales for Italian couples with and without children. Following Donaldson and Pendakur (2006) we incorporate the generalized absolute equivalence-scale exactness (GAESE) restrictions into a translated quadratic almost ideal (TQAI) demand system. We obtain declining with expenditure scales, a pattern that tends to strengthen when the number of children increases. This implies that scale economies in current consumption are lower for families with poor expenditure capacities. We also show that families living in the South and the Islands suffer a substantial additional cost to achieve, ceteris paribus, the same well-being of those living in the North. Finally, we find that ignoring the declining with expenditure pattern results in a relevant understatement of measured inequality.Equivalent Expenditure Functions; Equivalence Scales

Cue-Triggered Addiction and Natural Recovery

In this paper we propose a model of natural recovery, a widespread yet unexplained aspect of addictive behavior, starting from the recent theory developed by Bernheim and Rangel (2004). While the Bernheim and Rangel model generates many distinctive patterns of addiction, it does not explicitly consider pathways to natural recovery. Based on insights from neurosciences, we introduce an ”implicit cognitive appraisal” process depending on past experiences as well as on future expected consequences of addictive consumption. Such function affects the individual in two ways: it erodes the payoff from use as the decision maker grows older and it increases the cognitive control competing with the hedonic impulses to use, thus reducing the probability of making mistakes. While we do recognize the importance of allowing for cue-triggered mistakes in individual decision making, our model recovers an important role for cognitive processes, such as subjective cost-benefit evaluations, in explaining natural recovery.Addiction models, natural recovery, behavioral economics,cognitive policy, neuroscience.

La lirica di Durs Grünbein: una via d'acqua tra poesia e scienza

Il lavoro si propone di evidenziare alcuni aspetti della poetica di Durs Grünbein, partendo dall’analisi della loro presenza ancora appena delineata nelle prime liriche e seguendoli nei testi successivi, sia in versi che in prosa. L’attenzione è rivolta in particolare all’individuazione dei luoghi in cui emerge il legame tra il linguaggio poetico e l’elemento acqua, con il trasferimento da questa a quello delle sue caratteristiche positive

A Model of Spontaneous Remission from Addiction

This article develops a formal model of spontaneous recovery from pathological addiction. It regards addiction as a progressive susceptibility to stochastic environmental cues and introduce a cognitive appraisal process in individual decision making depending on past addiction experiences and on their future expected consequences. This process affects consumption choices in two ways. The reward from use decreases with age. At the same time, cognitive incentives emerge that reduce the probability of making mistakes. In addition to modeling the role of cue-triggered mistakes in individual decision making, the analysis highlights the role of other factors such as subjective self-evaluation and cognitive control. The implications for social policy and for the treatment of drug and alcohol dependence are discussed

The Economic Impact of Clean Indoor Air Laws: a Review of Alternative Approaches and of Empirical Findings

This paper surveys existing approaches and empirical results to estimating the impact of Clean Indoor Air Laws on smoking behaviour, on the one hand, and on the hospitality industry, on the other. The purpose is twofold: first, identifying important gaps, if any, in the literature that could be addressed in future research; second, trying to unfold the reasons of the wide heterogeneity in the results and, as a consequence, to provide an assessment of the reliability of those results. The discussion begins with a look at the recent regulations that motivate the study of the impact of Clean Indoor Air Laws, with a special emphasis on European smoking bans. This is followed by critical reviews of studies and approaches to estimating the economic impact of Clean Indoor Air Laws. We can distinguish between a direct and an indirect effect of anti-smoking regulations: the direct effect on smoking behavior and the indirect effect on the economic performance of the hospitality industry. The first review assesses those studies and approaches that have focused on the direct impact on smoking behaviour. The second review analyzes estimation of the economic impact on the hospitality industry. At the end of each of the two broad reviews, we summarize a selection of the empirical findings. The fifth section explores methodological differences and problems that may affect the empirical analysis reviewed in the previous sections with the purpose of shedding light on the wide heterogeneity in the empirical findings. The concluding section asks whether the studies reviewed in this paper place us in a better position to assess the economic impact of Clean Indoor Air Laws

Time Delay and Support for Taxation

People often experience the benefits of taxation with time. We design experiments to test the hypothesis that delaying the benefits of taxation can lead to low support for taxes. In a dynamic market experiment with negative externalities, we consistently find that people are less willing to accept Pigouvian taxes, aimed at reducing negative externalities and restoring market efficiency, when the negative externalities are delayed. While people learn to adopt taxation when the negative externality occurs immediately, the resistance to taxation remains robust over time when the externality is delayed. Our data suggest that people are less likely to support taxation when they found it difficult to understand the working of the new institution. We discuss the policy implications of our findings for promoting support for taxation

The Gray Zone

The Gray Zone ∗ Federico Crudu† University of Siena and CRENoS Roberta Di Stefano ‡ Sapienza University of Rome Giovanni Mellace§ University of Southern Denmark Silvia Tiezzi¶ University of Siena March 2022 Abstract On March 23, 2020, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Italy declared a nation- wide lockdown. A month earlier, on February 23, the Italian government ordered its military police to seal the borders and declared a Red Zone around 10 municipalities of the province of Lodi and in Vo’ Euganeo, a small town in Padua province. On the same day, Confindustria Bergamo, the province’s industrial association, posted a video on social media against having a lockdown in the area of Bergamo and was supported by key business leaders and local administrators. Despite having a similar infection rate to the Red Zone municipalities, the government decided not to extend the Red Zone to the municipalities of Bergamo province with high infection rates. Bergamo later became one of the deadliest outbreaks of the first wave of the virus in the Western world. What would have happened had the Red Zone been extended to that area? We use the Synthetic Control Method to estimate the causal effect of (not) declaring a Red Zone in the Bergamo area on daily excess mortality. We find that about two-thirds of the reported deaths could have been avoided had the Italian government declared the area a Red Zone