Economics

Abstract Smoking control policies are legitimate if they effectively reduce the smoking rate of the population. It is argued that if a smoking control policy prevents youths from smoking, it will reduce the smoking rate of the population in the long run. We test this argument using a sample of 95,000 individuals from the Canadian Community Health Survey.

I estimate models of endogenous social interactions in body weight at the county and state levels. The results show that dispersion in body weight across time and space in the US is not clearly excessive, and that much of this variation can be attributed to observable individual and regional characteristics.

Abstract This paper discusses estimation of causal effects of non-randomly assigned binary treatments on binary outcomes. The approach is full information maximum likelihood estimation of endogenously switching nonlinear regressions with a multivariate Student'st error structure. An application measures the effect of problem drinking on probability of employment.

Résumé Introduction: Depuis quelques décennies, deux tendances marquées s' observent au Canada comme ailleurs: une hausse de la prévalence de l'exces de poids et de l'obésité chez les enfants, et une proportion ala hausse des femmes (dont les meres) sur le marché du travail et des besoins en matiere de garde d'enfants.

Abstract This paper presents both conventional panel data estimates and estimates of the deep parameters of a dynamical theoretical model of response to the HIV+/AIDS epidemic. Given beliefs over current and future probabilities of infection per contact, the theoretical model predicts the distribution of number of di erent sexual partners selected and the proportion of people who are monogamous or celibate.

Abstract Introduction: Over recent decades, two prominent trends have been observed in Canada and elsewhere: increasing prevalence of childhood overweight and obesity, and increasing participation of women (including mothers) in the paid labour force and resulting demand for child care options. While an association between child care and children's body mass index (BMI) is plausible and would have policy relevance, its existence and nature in Canada is not known.

Why do obesity rates differ across the United States and Canada, for which groups do they differ, and what do these differences suggest for policy and for research? In this paper, we use cross-sectional data on middle-aged adults in the two countries to answer these questions. We are motivated by the public health challenge stemming from obesity, which has been welldocumented.

We present a simple microeconomic behavioral model showing that decreases in the price of energy-dense foods increase body weight if the price of obtaining a calorie from dense food is lower than that of less dense food. Estimates of the determinants of adolescent BMI suggest that the price of high-density food is negatively related to BMI whereas the price of low density food is positively related. Restaurant availability is not associated with weight, but increases in supermarket density predict lower weight.

Abstract. A key concern in policy debates over youth smoking is whether preventing children from smoking will stop them from smoking as adults or merely defer initiation into smoking. This paper estimates determinants of smoking status in late adolescence viewing smoking at age 14 as an endogenous 'treatment'on subsequent smoking. This approach disentangles causation from unobserved heterogeneity and allows addictiveness to vary across individuals.

Abstract This paper estimates a simultaneous model of moderate and problem drinking, smoking, and wages using a random sample of employed Canadian men. The results indicate that sample selection into alcohol and tobacco use is not negligible. With all else in the system held constant, moderate and heavy drinking are both associated with considerably higher wages than abstention from drinking, whereas smoking is associated with lower wages.

Abstract In an effort to increase understanding of the “alcohol/income puzzle”—the finding that drinking appears to lead to higher income—this paper presents maximum simulated likelihood estimates of a system of limited dependent variables governing smoking and drinking patterns and income. With all else held constant, moderate drinking is associated with 10 percent higher income, and heavy drinking associated with 12 percent higher income, than drinking abstention.

We show the estimable rational addiction model tends to yield spurious evidence in favor of the rational addiction hypothesis when aggregate data are used. Direct application of the canonical model yields results seemingly indicative that non-addictive commodities such as milk, eggs, and oranges are rationally addictive. Monte Carlo simulation demonstrates that such results are likely to obtain whenever the commodity under scrutiny exhibits high serial correlation, or when even a small amount of the variation in prices is endogenous, or when overidentified instrumental variables estimators are used, or when commonly imposed restrictions are employed. We conclude that time-series data will often be insufficient to differentiate rational addiction from serial correlation in the consumption series.

There is a religious trap haunting the contemporary world, raising a barrier to economic growth and innovation. The trap impacts two types of nation-states. One group consists of those plagued by tribal rivalries, ripped asunder by conflicts breaking out between groups worshipping different deities, ultimately bereft of strong national identity. A second group of states are those under the political influence of elites whose legitimacy is wedded to first Axial Age doctrines, for instance Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism. Clustered within this group there are some nations where the scope of educational endeavor is narrowly confined, precluding an open-minded outreach to advances in science and commerce achieved in regions of the globe where that status of first Axial Age elites has been marginalized, notably in Europe. The first section of the paper advances a historical argument explaining why the dominance of first Axial Age elites was eroded during the European Enlightenment, ushering in nationalism and the knowledge economy in European soil, spreading outward to other regions of the world afterword. The remainder of the paper investigates the influence that barriers to the intrusion of these two modernizing tendencies exercises on economic advance in the contemporary world. In particular it provides using a variable that measures the percentage of the population self declaring agnostic or atheist, it demonstrates when the recorded levels of agnosticism and atheism are low in a country there are impediments to innovation and economic growth in that country.