This paper studies the demand for tobacco products in post-unification Italy. We construct a very detailed panel dataset of yearly consumption in the 69 Italian provinces from 1871 to 1913, and use it to estimate the demand for tobacco products. We find support for the Becker and Murphy (1988)...

This paper studies how patent rights and price regulation affect how fast new drugs are launched in different countries, using newly constructed data on launches of 642 new drugs in 76 countries for the period 1983-2002, and information on the duration and content of patent and price control...

This article presents the situation of public health in the 19th century Greece, with an emphasis on the financing of lazarettos. Due to “ignorance” and lack of therapeutic means and hospitals, isolation was the predominant practice for dealing with illness, both on the level of local...

We test the effect of the introduction of Medicare Part D on physician prescribing behavior by using data on physician visits from the National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey (NAMCS) 2002-2004 and 2006-2009 for patients aged 60-69. We use a combined DD-RD specification that is an improvement...

Recent health care centralization trends raise the important question of the extent to which the quality of emergency medical services may offset effects from decreased access to emergency health care. This article analyzes whether residential proximity from an emergency room affects the...

In almost all countries supply, distribution and use of cannabis is prohibited. Nevertheless, cannabis is the most popular illicit drug. Prohibition does not seem to work. The debate on legalization of cannabis is often emotional with strong views of both proponents and opponents but ignorance...

We investigate the determinants of the support for cannabis legalizationfinding a causal effect of personal experience with cannabis use. Current and past cannabis users are more in favor of legalization. We relate this to self-interest and inside information about potential dangers of cannabis...

In this contribution the authors show that development assistance targeting reproductive health overwhelmingly concentrates on HIV/AIDS at the expense of family planning elements. Data on financial contributions disbursed by governments and private foundations are used as collected by the...

Abstract: We examine the impact of new medical information on drug safety on preventive health behavior. We exploit the release of the findings of the Women's Health Initiative Study (WHIS) -the largest randomized controlled trial of women's health- which demonstrated in 2002 that long-term...