IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/bdi/workqs/qse_31.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Demand for Tobacco in Post-Unification Italy

Author

Listed:
  • Carlo Ciccarelli

    (Università di Roma Tor Vergata, Dipartimento di Economia e Finanza)

  • Gianni De Fraja

    (Nottingham School of Economics and Università di Roma Tor Vergata, Dipartimento di Economia e Finanza)

Abstract

This paper studies the demand for tobacco products in post-unification Italy. We construct a very detailed panel dataset of annual consumption in the 69 Italian provinces from 1871 to 1913, which is then used to estimate the demand for tobacco products. We find support for the Becker and Murphy (1988) rational addiction model. We also find that, in the period considered, tobacco was a normal good in Italy: aggregate tobacco consumption increased with income. Subsequently, we consider separately the four types of products which comprise aggregate tobacco (fine-cut tobacco, snuff, cigars, and cigarettes), and tentatively suggest that habit formation was a stronger factor in the persistence of consumption than physical addiction. The paper ends by showing that the introduction of the Bonsack cigarette rolling machine in the early 1890s did not coincide with changes in the structure of the demand for tobacco, suggesting cost-driven technological change.

Suggested Citation

  • Carlo Ciccarelli & Gianni De Fraja, 2014. "The Demand for Tobacco in Post-Unification Italy," Quaderni di storia economica (Economic History Working Papers) 31, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
    • Handle: RePEc:bdi:workqs:qse_31
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.bancaditalia.it/pubblicazioni/quaderni-storia/2014-0031/index.html
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. repec:bdi:workqs:qse_1 is not listed on IDEAS
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Carlo Ciccarelli & Pierpaolo Pierani & Silvia Tiezzi, 2018. "What Can We Learn about Smoking from 150 Years of Italian Data?," Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 40(4), pages 695-717, December.
    2. Matteo Gomellini & Cormac Ó Gráda, 2019. "Brain Drain and Brain Gain in Italy and Ireland in the Age of Mass Migration," Palgrave Studies in Economic History, in: David Mitch & Gabriele Cappelli (ed.), Globalization and the Rise of Mass Education, chapter 0, pages 163-191, Palgrave Macmillan.
    3. Ciccarelli, Carlo & De Fraja, Gianni & Vuri, Daniela, 2021. "Effects of passive smoking on prenatal and infant development: Lessons from the past," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 42(C).
    4. Carlo Ciccarelli & Anna Missiaia, 2014. "Business Fluctuations in Imperial Austria's Regions, 1867-1913: New Evidence," CEIS Research Paper 312, Tor Vergata University, CEIS, revised 11 Apr 2014.
    5. Carlo Ciccarelli & Jean Paul Elhorst, 2016. "A Spatial Diffusion Model with Common Factors and an Application to Cigarette Consumption," CEIS Research Paper 381, Tor Vergata University, CEIS, revised 31 May 2016.
    6. Carlo Ciccarelli & Pierpaolo Pierani & Silvia Tiezzi, 2014. "Secular trends in tobacco consumption: the case of Italy, 1871-2010," Department of Economics University of Siena 700, Department of Economics, University of Siena.
    7. Francesco Giffoni & Matteo Gomellini, 2015. "Brain gain in the age of mass migration," Quaderni di storia economica (Economic History Working Papers) 34, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
    8. Ciccarelli, Carlo & Elhorst, J.Paul, 2018. "A dynamic spatial econometric diffusion model with common factors: The rise and spread of cigarette consumption in Italy," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 131-142.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    smoking; Italian Kingdom; rational addiction; panel data;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D11 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Consumer Economics: Theory
    • N33 - Economic History - - Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Health, Welfare, Income, Wealth, Religion, and Philanthropy - - - Europe: Pre-1913
    • I18 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bdi:workqs:qse_31. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/bdigvit.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.