This paper studies the impact of legal medical marijuana markets on the decision to quit marijuana use. We distinguish between de jure legalization, where dispensaries are legally protected, and de facto legalization, where dispensaries operate in the absence of laws protecting them. Geographic...

This research evaluates the impact of electronic monitoring as an alternative to prison on reoffending. Leveraging plausibly exogenous variation in sentencing outcomes generated by quasi- random assignment of judges, we find electronic monitoring reduces reoffending within 24 months by 16...

This paper investigates whether cannabis use leads to worse mental health. To do so, we account for common unobserved factors affecting mental health and cannabis consumption by modeling mental health jointly with the dynamics of cannabis use. Our main finding is that using cannabis increases...

This research provides the first evidence on the impacts of waiting times for treatment for a substance use disorder (SUD). Using rich linked administrative information from Norway, we study the impact of waiting time on health-care utilization, employment and crime for patients who enter...

This paper uses duration models and self-reported cannabis histories from young Australians to study the dynamics of cannabis use. We find that low cannabis prices are associated with early initiation into cannabis use. While the decision to quit does not appear to be directly influenced by...

This paper investigates whether college students' response to alcohol price and policies differ according to their drinking intensity. Individual level data on drinking behavior, price paid per drink, and college alcohol policies come from the student and administrator components of the 1997 and...

Passive smoking is a major public health issue. This paper documents the main risk factors that determine children’s exposure to passive smoke, and then uses econometric techniques to provide a new economic quantification of the impact of this exposure on child health. Such information is...

In this paper we use individual level data from the Australian National Drug Strategy Household Survey to study the relationship between initiation into cannabis use and educational attainment. Using instrumental variable estimation and bivariate duration analysis we find that those initiating...

It is often conjectured that a significant cost of youthful drinking is the future labour market consequences of having accumulated a lower stock of human capital. While several studies have investigated the effect of youthful drinking on the quantity of human capital stock accumulated, measured...