Tobacco and Alcohol: Complements or Substitutes? A Statistical Guinea Pig Approach

Abstract

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in AbstractThe question of whether two drugs -namely alcohol and tobacco -are used as complements or substitutes is of crucial interest if side-effects of anti-drug policies are considered. Numerous papers have empirically addressed this issue by estimating demand systems for alcohol and tobacco and subsequently calculating cross-price effects. However, this traditional approach often is seriously hampered by insufficient price-variation observed in survey data. We, therefore, suggest an alternative instrumental variables approach that statistically mimics an experimental study and does not rely on prices as explanatory variables. This approach is applied to German survey data. Our estimation results suggest that a reduction in tobacco consumption results in a reduction in alcohol consumption, too. It is shown theoretically that this implies that alcohol and tobacco are complements. Hence, we conclude that successful antismoking policies will not result in the unintended side-effect of an increased (ab)use of alcohol.JEL Classification: C31, D12, I12

Heterogeneity in the intergenerational transmission of alcohol consumption: A quantile regression approach

“…1 In fact, children's consumption of alcohol is frequently found to be positively correlated with the level of parental drinking, cf. Ennett and Bauman (1991), Rice and Sutton (1998), Zhang et al (1999), Beal et al (2001), Van Gundy (2002), Tauchmann et al (2006), and Komro et al (2007). 2 In some cases, though, just one parent's influence turns out to be significant and/or only sons or daughters are affected.…”

“…A major reason is that determining whether such effects are harmful to children's physical and behavioral health or whether they merely represent the intergenerational transmission of a normal social behavior is far from easy. For instance, Tauchmann et al (2006) find that children with a father who drinks alcohol daily consume roughly four grams of alcohol more a day than children of non-drinking fathers. The effect of maternal drinking is of similar magnitude.…”

Smoking in Germany: Stylized Facts, Behavioral Models, and Health Policy

“…Generally, studies of intergenerational transmission state that there exists a significant, positive correlation between parental and children's smoking behavior for Germany (see, e.g., Bantle and Haisken-DeNew, 2002;Tauchmann et al, 2006;Göhlmann, 2007a). This correlation does not tell us, whether the underlying behavioral channel of transmission is rather imitation or genetic disposition.…”

“…Individuals might compensate an induced reduction in tobacco consumption by a corresponding increase in the consumption of, for example, alcohol or marijuana (see, e.g., Jones, 1989;Florkowski and McNamara, 1992;Goel and Morey, 1995;Jimenez and Labeaga, 1994;Dee, 1999;Decker and Schwartz, 2000;Cameron and Williams, 2001;Bask and Melkerson, 2004;Zhao and Harris, 2004;Picone et al, 2004;Tauchmann et al, 2006). Estimating systems of demand functions and calculating cross-price effects or by using alternative approaches these studies usually find that tobacco and alcohol, but also tobacco and marijuana/cannabis are complements in consumption.…”