Putting Out Fires: An Examination of the Determinants of State Clean Indoor-Air Laws

Although numerous studies have examined the effect of clean indoor-air laws on tobacco consumption, a handful of other studies have sought to address the demand for smoking restrictions. This paper adds to this body of research by using a random effects Probit procedure that controls for the endogeneity of cigarette consumption and cigarette taxes to estimate the determinants of clean indoor-air laws. By treating cigarette consumption and cigarette taxes as exogenous, we found that taxes complement smoking restrictions. However, when we accounted for endogeneity, the role of cigarette taxes shifted toward being a policy substitute. Results further revealed that the probability of a state adopting a smoking restriction is particularly sensitive to per capita cigarette consumption, political affiliation, metropolitan population, per capita income, and tobacco production.