The Becker (1968) model of crime establishes the importance of the probability of apprehension as a key factor in a rational individual’s decision to commit a crime. In this respect, most empirical studies have used U.S. data to study the effects of more police officers on crime rates. We add...

In response to the widespread availability of illegal contraband, the federal and five provincial governments in Canada implemented a 40-60% reduction to cigarette excise taxes in February 1994. We exploit this unique and discrete policy shock by estimating the effects of cigarette taxes on...

The paper builds a unique industry‐level panel data set to estimate the border effects associated with US–Canada trade for each year from 1992 to 2005. We first establish the theoretical foundation of our empirical model as a multisector version of Anderson and van Wincoop. Estimates from...

I exploit cross province and time series variation in Canadian mandatory seat belt legislation to empirically test the offset hypothesis. The results of this study offer modest evidence on the existence of offsetting behavior by drivers. Specifically, increased usage of seat belts by drivers...

Objectives: Recent studies suggest an ambiguous relationship between obesity and cigarette taxes. We employ Canadian data to evaluate the effects of cigarette taxes on smoking and obesity. Methods: We use a simple reduced form approach and exploit the significant cross-province differences that...

Most research using cross-country data find income elasticities with respect to health expenditure equal to or exceeding unity. These results might be confounded due to omitted variables bias as well the presence of unobserved country and year specific determinants of per capita health...