Objective: To estimate cigarette demand and to simulate a tax policy targeted to reduce tobacco consumption. Materials and methods: Demand was estimated using a vector error correction model. Simulation exercises present the impact of a tax increase on consumption and revenues. Results: Changes in real income and the real price of cigarettes affect the demand for cigarettes in Argentina. Th...

The value of changes in mortality risk is conventionally estimated by the marginal rate of substitution between income and mortality risk—the value per statistical life (VSL). Previous estimates of the income elasticity of VSL, obtained from meta-analysis of compensating-wagedifferential studies and from contingent valuation, are typically less than one, often 0.3 to 0.5. We present new estimat...

The use of grouped data results in a downward bias in estimates of inequality because grouping omits intra-group inequality. This note shows that using grouped data may not lead to similar difficulties when estimating statistics such as the Gini income elasticity, which provides information on the impact on inequality of a marginal change in an income source, tax, or transfer.

The Dollar-Kraay result (that the income elasticity of the lowest quintile’s income is essentially one) is identified as a statistical artifact related to the irregular sampling intervals in their data. Corrected results suggest an asymmetric response to growth versus decline.

OBJECTIVE During the past decades, smoking prevalence in Greece was estimated to be near or over 40%. Following a sharp fall in cigarette consumption, as shown in current data, our objective is to assess smokers' sensitivity to cigarette price and consumer income changes as well as to project health benefits of an additional tax increase. METHODS Cigarette consumption was considered as the de...

Demand theory can be applied to analyse how a human or animal consumer changes her selection of commodities within a certain budget in response to changes in price of those commodities. This change in consumption assessed over a range of prices is defined as demand elasticity. Previously, income-compensated and income-uncompensated price changes have been investigated using human and animal con...

Background and Objectives: Pharmaceutical expenditures are responsible for a major part of health systems’ cost. According to the WHO’s statistics, Iran is the first among the 20 countries in the world in terms of drug consumption. The first step in controlling consumption of a particular good is to identify factor inducing the relevant demands. Hence, this study aimed to identify the pattern a...

abstract the objective of this study is evaluation of government’s optimum combination of policy instruments on per capita consumption of bread and the share of this product in food cost of families in different income classes. the minimization of changes in dead weight loss function is used in this study. by using boot strop method and on base of normal distribution for supply elasticity and d...