Richard W. Ault

Smoking and absenteeism

Studies of the causes of absence from work tend to indicate uniformly that smokers miss more work than non-smokers. Some estimates of this increased smoker absenteeism range as high as 32%, or about 81 million additional lost days of work per year in the US alone. Unfortunately these studies, in the main, employ only a simple means difference test as a statistical basis for their deductions, and hence are incapable of determining whether smokers miss more work because they smoke or for other reasons common to smokers as a group. In this study, we posit a native model of absenteeism and employ Tobit analysis to estimate its response to various determinants using data from the 1968 PSID. We than empoly a Blinder-type decomposition technique to attempt to determine the amount of absenteeism attributable directly or indirectly to smoking behaviour of workers. Our results suggest that smokers miss no more work than non-smokers because they smoke. Rather smokers tend to be younger, heavier drinkers, blue collar...

The economic effects of long-term rent control: The case of New York City

This article presents a simple model of rent control in which the costs and benefits can be analyzed in terms of Hicksian consumer and producer surpluses. Data from New York City are then used to examine the effect of the long-term rent control in that city. Estimates are presented which suggest that the program provided tenants with benefits amounting to about 5 percent of their income in the years 1965 and 1968. Additional evidence shows that tenant benefits declined rather sharply between the two years, and that in each of the years benefits were higher for older tenants, richer tenants, and white tenants than for their counterparts. Finally, evidence presented here suggests that, due to the in-kind nature of the program, the cost to landlords exceeded the benefits to tenants by about 75 percent.

Smokeless tobacco, smoking cessation and harm reduction: an economic analysis

Good estimates place ‘hard core’ smoking rates in the United States at approximately 25%, with little change over the decade of the 1990s. This paper examines the possibilities of ‘harm reduction’ with the use of smokeless tobacco. Specifically, using an econometric model we seek to determine whether an increase in the use of smokeless tobacco would lead to reduced smoking rates in the United States. Applying our model to the NHANES III (National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey) we find that the use of smokeless tobacco by an average U.S. male smoker would increase the average probability of smoke cessation by over 10%. Approximately 3 million additional ‘quits’ would result for 26 million smokers. Our study permits an examination of cessation by age groups and we find that males who use smokeless tobacco between 16 and 65 have a 10–14% probability of quitting but that the probability falls beyond age 66. Important implications for life extension and health costs would attend these results with, under conservative assumptions, life years saved approximating 2.16 million and health care cost-savings of about

On the (mis)use of cross-price effects to gauge the effectiveness of smokeless tobacco in smoking cessation

3 billion per year.

The Effect of Long-Term Rent Control on Tenant Mobility

In a recent edition of this journal Mikael Bask and Maria Melkersson suggested that moist snuff, snus to the Swedes, is not an effective tool in cigarette smoking cessation. The sole basis for this conclusion is their empirical findings concerning the cross-price elasticity of demand between cigarettes and snus. Specifically, they find that, “The cross-price elasticities are negative, which indicates that snus contributes to increased smoking. Thus, even if snus taking is less harmful than cigarette smoking, it is not advisable to encourage its use in smoking cessation programs.” We find this conclusion to be unwarranted. It is based on a model estimated with inappropriate data; it is based on a misspecified model with questionable theoretical underpinnings; and no evidence is presented as to the statistical significance of the cross-price effects. Furthermore, even if we ignore these technical criticisms, their conclusions are unfounded because they are based on an inappropriate conceptual experiment. We first address some technical problems with the Bask and Melkersson analysis, and then we address the fundamental flaw in their reasoning