Abstract
Economists have a well-established framework for understanding the welfare consequences of taxing goods that don’t create externalities. Taxes create dead-weight loss by causing consumers to distort their consumption away from their preferred choices. This cost is weighed against the benefits of government revenue. As established in the seminal analysis of Becker and Murphy (1988), this argument applies equally well to both addictive and nonaddictive goods. The same type of revealed preference arguments that suggest that taxes reduce the welfare of consumers of nonaddictive goods can be extended to “rational addicts”: agents decide to smoke by trading off the long-term costs of consumption against the immediate pleasures of consuming, all the while taking into account the addictive properties of the good in question. This model therefore suggests that the only justification for taxing addictive goods is the interpersonal externalities associated with consumption of those goods.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsPreview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Becker, Gary S. and Kevin Murphy (1988) “A Theory of Rational Addiction”, Journal of Political Economy, 96: 675–700.
Bernheim, Douglas and Antonio Rangel (2002) “Addiction, Cognition, and the Visceral Brain”, mimeo.
Bertrand, Marianne and Sendhil Mullainathan (2001) “Do People Mean What they Say? Implications for Subjective Survey Data”, American Economic Review, 91(2).
Bertrand, Marianne, Esther Duflo and Sendhil Mullainathan (2001) “How Much Should We Trust Differences in Differences?” mimeo.
Blanchflower, D.G. and Oswald, A.J. (1996) “The Rising Well-Being of the Young”, paper presented at an NBER Conference on Disadvantaged Youth, North Carolina, December.
Blanchflower, D.G. and Oswald, A.J. (2000) “Wellbeing Over Time in Britain and the USA”, mimeo, July, 2000.
Chaloupka Frank J. and Kenneth Warner (2001) “The Economics of Smoking”, in Anthony Culyer and Joseph Newhouse (eds), Handbook of Health Economics, pp. 1539–628.
Clark, A.E., “Unemployment as a Social Norm: Psychological Evidence from Panel Data”, Journal of Labor Economics, forthcoming.
Clark, A.E. and Oswald, A.J. (1994) “Unhappiness and Unemployment”, Economic Journal, 104: 648–59.
Di Tella, R., MacCulloch, R. and Oswald, A.J. (2001) “Preferences over Inflation and Unemployment: Evidence from Surveys of Happiness”, American Economic Review, 91(1): 335–41.
Easterlin, R. (1974) “Does Economic Growth Improve the Human Lot? Some Empirical Evidence”, in P.A. David and M.W. Reder (eds), Nations and Households in Economic Growth: Essays in Honour of Moses Abramowitz. New York and London: Academic Press.
Easterlin, R. (1995) “Will Raising the Incomes of All Increase the Happiness of All?”, Journal of Economic Behaviour and Organization, 27: 35–48.
Ellwood, David and Mary Jo Bane (1985) “The Impact of AFDC on Family Structure and Living Arrangements”, in R. Ehrenberg (ed.), Research in Labor Economics.
Gardner, Jonathan and Andrew Oswald (2001) “Does Money Buy Happiness? A Longitudinal Study Using Data on Windfalls”, mimeo.
Gruber, Jonathan and Botond Koszegi (2001) “Is Addiction ‘Rational’? Theory and Evidence”, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 116: 1261–303.
Gruber, Jonathan and Botond Koszegi (2002) “A Theory of Government Regulation of Addictive Bads: Optimal Tax Levels and Tax Incidence for Cigarette Taxation”, NBER Working Paper #8777.
Gruber, Jonathan, Anindya Sen and Mark Stabile (2002) “Estimating Price Elasticities When There is Smuggling: The Sensitivity of Smoking to Price in Canada”, NBER Working Paper #8962.
Gul F. and W. Pessendorfer (2001) “Temptation and Self-Control”, Econometrica, 69: 1403–35.
Kahneman, D. (1999) “Objective Happiness”, ch. 1 in Kahneman, D., Diener, E. and Schwarz, N. (eds), Well Being: the Foundations of Hedonic Psychology.
Laibson, David (1997) “Golden Eggs and Hyperbolic Discounting”, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 443–77.
OECD (2002) OECD Health Data, 2001. Paris: OECD.
Ted O’Donoghue and Matthew Rabin (1999) “Doing It Now or Later”, American Economic Review, 89(1): 103–24.
Schwarz, N. and Strack, F. (1999) “Reports of Subjective Well-Being: Judgmental Processes and Their Methodological Implications”, ch. 4 in Kahneman, D., Diener, E. and Schwarz, N. (eds), Well Being: the Foundations of Hedonic Psychology.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2006 Jonathan Gruber and Sendhil Mullainathan
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Gruber, J., Mullainathan, S. (2006). Do Cigarette Taxes Make Smokers Happier?. In: Ng, YK., Ho, L.S. (eds) Happiness and Public Policy. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230288027_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230288027_6
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-28181-7
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-28802-7
eBook Packages: Palgrave Economics & Finance CollectionEconomics and Finance (R0)