This paper provides new evidence on how tobacco control policies affect adolescent smoking as measured by self-reported measures and serum cotinine levels, a biomarker of nicotine exposure. I use data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys covering 1988-1994 and 1999-2012....

This paper develops a difference-in-semielasticities (DIS) interpretation for the coefficients of dichotomous variable interaction terms in nonlinear models with exponential conditional mean functions, including but not limited to Poisson, Negative Binomial, and log linear models. We show why...

This paper proposes a new framework for the measurement of population health and the ranking of the health of different geographies. Since population health is a latent variable, studies which measure and rank the health of different geographies must aggregate observable health attributes into...

This paper uses unconditional quantile regression to estimate whether smokers' responses to tobacco control policies change across the distribution of smoking levels. I measure smoking behavior with the number of cigarettes smoked per day and also with serum cotinine levels, a continuous...

We examine the extent to which self-reported health measures suffer from reporting bias and then characterize how this reporting bias affects the estimation of income-related health inequality as measured by the concentration index. We run a comprehensive set of tests of reporting bias using...

This paper estimates effects of e-cigarette taxes enacted in eight states and two large counties on e-cigarette prices, e-cigarette sales, and sales of other tobacco products. We use NielsenIQ Retail Scanner data from 2011 to 2017, comprising approximately 35,000 retailers nationally, and...

The seasonal influenza virus afflicts millions of people in the U.S. population each year, imposing significant costs on those who fall ill, their families, employers, and the health care system. The flu is transmitted via droplet spread or close contact, and certain environments, such as...

We investigate the hot hand hypothesis using detailed data on free throws and field goal attempts for the 2004-2005 through 2015-2016 NBA regular seasons. Free throws represent a more controlled setting, allowing a closer examination of the potential physiological mechanisms behind success in...