Expenditures on prescription drugs are one of the fastest growing components of national health care spending, rising by almost three-fold between 1995 and 2007. Coinciding with this growth in prescription drug expenditures has been a rapid rise in direct-to-consumer advertising (DTCA), made...

The behavioral economic model presented in this paper argues that the effect of advertising and price differ by past consumption levels. The model predicts that advertising is more effective in reducing consumption at high past consumption levels but less effective at low past consumption...

This paper examines the effect of nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) advertising on youth smoking. NRT advertising could decrease smoking by informing smokers that the product can make quitting easier and thus inducing more smokers to try and quit. However, a moral hazard is created because NRT...

Since the late 1970s, the number of obese adults in the United States has grown by over 50 percent. This paper examines the factors that may be responsible for this rapidly increasing prevalence rate. To study the determinants of adult obesity and related outcomes, we employ micro-level data...

In this paper we summarize research that deals with the effects of alcoholic beverage prices and excise taxes on a variety of outcomes for youth. These include alcohol consumption, excessive consumption, motor vehicle accident mortality, and college completion rates. The research employs six...