Medical experts have argued forcefully that using cigarettes harms health, prompting the adoption of myriad anti-smoking … cigarette taxes is associated with an 8 percent reduction in adult smoking participation and a 6 percent reduction in mortality … policies. The association between smoking and mortality may, however, be driven by unobserved factors, making it difficult to …

In this paper I unify the economic theories of addiction and health deficit accumulation and develop a life cycle … theory in which individuals take into account the fact that the consumption of addictive goods reduces their health and … motivating empirically observable patterns of addictive goods consumption. I take the case of smoking as unhealthy behavior …