We show that individuals who are in poorer health, independently from smoking, are more likely to start smoking and to smoke more cigarettes than those with better non-smoking health. We present evidence of selection, relying on extensive data on morbidity and mortality. We show that health...

In this article, we illustrate the command distrate, which calcu- lates age-standardized rates with efficient interval estimation by using formulas developed by Tiwari, Clegg, and Zou (2006, Statistical Methods in Medical Re- search 15: 547–569) as a modification of the method proposed by Fay...

Marginal structural models (MSM) provide a powerful tool for estimating the causal effect of a treatment. These models, introduced by Robins (e.g. Robins (2000a), Robins (2000b), van der Laan and Robins (2002)), model the marginal distributions of treatment-specific counterfactual outcomes,...