We examine the impact of three sets of government regulations on the demand for cigarettes by teenagers in the United States. These are: (1) the excise tax on cigarettes, (2) the Fairness Doctrine of the Federal Communications Commission, which resulted in the airing of anti-smoking messages on radio and television from July 1, 1967 to January 1, 1971,and (3) the Public Health Cigarette Smoking Act of 1970, which banned pro-smoking cigarette advertising on radio and television after January 1, 1971.Teenage price elasticities of demand for cigarettes are substantial and much larger than the corresponding adult price elasticities. The teenage smoking participation elasticity equals -1.2, and the quantity smoked elasticity equals -1.4. It follows that, if future reductions in youth smoking are desired, an increase in the Federal excise tax is a potent policy to accomplish this goal. The contention of the proponents of the advertising ban that the Fairness Doctrine failed in the case of teenagers is incorrect. According to our results, the doctrine had a substantial negative impact on teenage smoking participation rates. Extrapolations suggest that the advertising ban was no better or worse a policy than the Fairness Doctrine.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version under "Related research" (further below) or search for a different version of it.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number
0655.
Length: Date of creation: Mar 1982 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:0655
Note: HE Contact details of provider: Postal: National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A. Phone: 617-868-3900 Email: Web page: http://www.nber.org More information through EDIRC
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its listing, contact: ().
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Victor R. Fuchs & Robert T. Michael & Sharon R. Scott, 1979.
"A State Price Index,"
NBER Working Papers
0320, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)
Cited by: (explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.) This item has more than 25 citations. To prevent cluttering this page, these citations are listed on a separate page.