We study favoritism via hometown ties, a common source of favor exchange in China, in fellow selection of the Chinese Academies of Sciences and Engineering. Hometown ties to fellow selection committee members increase candidates' election probability by 39 percent, coming entirely from the...

Electronic cigarettes show potential to reduce the harms from smoking combustible tobacco, but there is uncertainty about the long-term health consequences. We replicate and extend the study by Bhatta and Glantz (20192), which reports longitudinal statistical associations between e-cigarette use...

We study the impact of new information on people's perceptions of the risks of e-cigarettes. In September 2019 the U.S. experienced an outbreak of e-cigarette, or vaping, associated lung injuries (EVALI). The EVALI outbreak created an information shock, which was followed by additional new...

Electronic cigarettes are a less harmful alternative to combustible cigarettes. We analyze data on e-cigarette choices in an online experimental market. Our data and mixed logit model capture two sources of consumer optimization errors: over-estimates of the relative risks of e-cigarettes; and...

The U.S. 2009 Tobacco Control Act opened the door for new anti-smoking policies by giving the Food and Drug Administration broad regulatory authority over the tobacco industry. We develop a behavioral welfare economics approach to conduct cost-benefit analysis of FDA tobacco regulations. We use...

The FDA is considering using its regulatory authority over the tobacco industry to promote public health by restricting the advertising of menthol cigarettes. In this paper we contribute new empirical evidence on the effects of magazine advertisements for menthol cigarettes on cigarette demand....

Regulatory policies designed to improve societal welfare by "nudging" consumers to make better choices are increasingly popular. The application of benefit-cost analysis (BCA) to this sort of regulation confronts difficult theoretical and applied issues. In this analysis we contribute a worked...

Smoking is the leading preventable cause of death in the U.S. Because e-cigarettes do not involve the combustion of tobacco, vaping offers the potential to prevent most of the health consequences of smoking. We study the impact of an information shock created by an outbreak of lung injuries...

Of the 45.7 million current smokers in the U.S. age 12 and over, more than 18.5 million usually smoke menthol cigarettes. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently proposed a tobacco product standard that would prohibit menthol as a characterizing flavor in cigarettes (FDA 2022b). Although...

Requiring graphic warning labels (GWLs) on cigarette packaging has become a highly contentious unresolved legal battle. The constitutionality depends, in part, on the likely impact of GWLs on smoking decisions, and whether they generate knowledge as opposed to emotional reactions against...