Referring to the literature on optimal stopping under sequential sampling developed by Chernoff and collaborators, we solve a dynamic model of the economic evaluation of a new health technology, deriving optimal rules for technology adoption, research abandonment and continuation as functions of...

We consider the biases that can arise in bias elicitation when expert assessors make random errors. We illustrate the phenomenon for two sources of bias: that due to omitting important variables in a least squares regression and that which arises in adjusting relative risks for treatment effects...

We consider the optimal control of inequality under uncertainty, with a particular focus on income inequality. For an economy experiencing economic growth and random shocks, we show how a simple loss and `bequest' function may be combined to guide the expected level of inequality towards a...

This paper examines the response of the American tobacco companies to the health scare surrounding tobacco harm between 1953 and 1964, through an analysis of the operations of the Tobacco Industry Research Committee (TIRC). We consider the reasons for the TIRC's establishment and subsequent...

We present a version of Chern et al.'s (1995) Bayesian model of `health risk belief' to track the evolution of the `weight' of epidemiological evidence concerning tobacco harm that was in the possession of the U.S. Tobacco Industry Research Committee (T.I.R.C.) and the U.S. Public Health Service...

This paper presents some numerical simulations of a model of healthy and unhealthy consumption to investigate the impact of various terminal conditions on an individual's life-span, pathways of consumption and health. A `benchmark' model, in which both the life-span and the individual's `death'...

The annual five per cent in real terms increase in tobacco taxes proposed in the recent White Paper on smoking has reaffirmed the commitment of successive United Kingdom governments to above inflation increases in tobacco taxation to encourage people to stop smoking. This paper presents evidence...

Referencing once-confidential tobacco industry documents, we compare reviews of the epidemiological literature concerning tobacco harm that were carried out by the U.S. Tobacco Industry Research Committee (T.I.R.C.) and the U.S. Public Health Service and related groups during the 1950s and early...