This paper investigates the impact of the public smoking ban which came into effect in Italy on January 2005 on individual smoking behaviour. Current empirical evidence supports the existence of a negative effect of the Italian ban on smoking prevalence and consumption in the general population....

A large literature has documented significant public health benefits associated with the minimum legal drinking age in the United States, particularly because of the resulting effects on motor vehicle accidents. These benefits form the primary basis for continued efforts to restrict youth access...

Economists consider personality traits to be stable, particularly throughout adulthood. However, evidence from psychological studies suggests that the stability assumption may not always be valid, as personality traits can respond to certain life events. Our paper analyzes whether and to what...

This paper examines the extent to which the 2005 Clean Air Act introduced in South Korea affected air pollution and infant health. To identify the causal effect, we exploit the time and geographical variations in the adoption of the Act between 2003 and 2006. During this period, the Clean Air...

This paper investigates the short-term effects of public smoking bans on individual smoking behavior. In 2007 and 2008, state-level smoking bans were gradually introduced in all of Germany's sixteen federal states. We exploit this variation in the timing of state bans to identify the effect that...

We consider the effect of legal access to alcohol, which is known to increase drinking behavior, on academic performance. We first estimate the effect using an RD design but argue that this approach is not well-suited to the research question in our setting. Our preferred approach instead...

The considerable literature on the value of a statistical life (VSL) documents the wage-mortality risk tradeoffs for the working population. Regulatory analyses often must monetize risks to populations at the tails of the age distribution. Because of the longer life expectancy for children,...

Evidence on cannabis legalization's effects on mental health remains scarce, despite both rapid increases in cannabis use and an ongoing mental health crisis in the United States. We use granular geographic data to estimate medical cannabis dispensary availability's effects on self-reported...

Twenty-three states and the District of Columbia have passed medical marijuana laws. Previous research shows that these laws increase marijuana use among adults. In this paper, we estimate the effects of medical marijuana laws (MML) on secondary and post-secondary students' time use using time...

This paper assesses the effectiveness of child safety seat laws. These laws progressively increased the mandatory age up to which children must be restrained in safety seats in cars. We use US Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) data from 1978 to 2011 and rich state-time level variation in...