Many studies have estimated the cost of smoking. In recent years, such estimates have been widely used in litigation against the tobacco companies. Both longitudinal and cross-sectional methods have been used. On balance, the longitudinal approach, the one used in this study, is much preferable...

We used the first five waves of the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) to study three distinct but possibly interrelated phenomena: smoking cessation, changes in alcohol consumption, and changes in weight. The HRS is well suited for our study because it contains smoking and drinking behavior...

This dissertation consists of three essays that study preventive health behaviors among the elderly U.S.population. The first essay studies the effect of Medicare coverage on demand for the influenza vaccine. I use apropensity score matching estimator to look at the effect of the 1993 Medicare...

A study to determine whether lifetime earnings in various specialties influence physicians' choice of field. Although income payments to practicing physicians in certain specialties felt to be "shortage" fields may be a politically infeasible policy instrument for influencing specialty choice,...