As in most OECD countries, smoking prevalence and cigarette consumption have been decreasing in Germany since the early 2000s. This paper analyses whether smoking prevalence and cigarette consumption, as well as their development over time, differ between socio-economic subgroups. Identifying these differences provides insights into the effect of policy interventions on German smoking behaviour. Based on data from the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), a large longitudinal study of the German population, we find that both the decline in smoking prevalence and the decline in average cigarette consumption were probably driven by a behavioural change of younger people, as well as of those with a high educational level and those with a high income. People who quit smoking were on average more highly educated, had a higher income and had most likely a lower cigarette consumption (before quitting). In contrast, smoking prevalence increased among people who were older than 45 and had a low educational level and among those who were unemployed. Smoking prevalence among women was relatively constant over time. Indeed, the smoking prevalence of women and men converged over time, especially in older age groups. Daily cigarette consumption of smokers increased among 66-to-75-year-olds, although it decreased in all other age groups. One explanation might be that the tobacco control measures were successful only in certain socio-economic subgroups. Not only smoking prevalence, but also smoking intensity was higher among men, among those with a lower educational level and among those with a lower income. Especially for younger birth cohorts, smoking prevalence among those with a lower educational level was particularly high. Thus, based on data from 1998 through 2014, the so-called social gradient in smoking was only a distinct feature of younger birth cohorts, and not of older ones.
It is shown that the equilibrium in the asymmetric Tullock contest is unique for parameter values r ≤ 2. This allows proving a revenue ranking result saying that a revenue-maximizing designer capable of biasing the contest always prefers a contest technology with higher accuracy.
It is shown that the n-player lottery contest admits a best-response potential (Voorneveld, 2000, Economics Letters). This is true also when the contest technology reflects the possibility of a draw. The result implies, in particular, the existence of a non-trivial two-player zero-sum game that is best-response equivalent to a game with identical payoff functions.
Worldwide, an estimated 200 million girls and women have been subjected to female genital cutting. Female genital cutting is defined as an intentional injury to the female genitalia without medical justification. The practice occurs in at least 29 countries in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. In addition, globalization and migration have brought immigrants from countries where cutting is commonly practiced to countries where cutting is not traditionally practiced and may even be illegal. In countries receiving immigrants, governments and development agencies would like to know if girls with parents who immigrated from practicing countries are at risk of being cut. Risk assessments, for example, could help governments identify the need for programs promoting the abandonment of cutting among immigrants. Extrapolating from the prevalence and incidence rates in practicing countries, however, is generally not sufficient to guarantee a valid estimate of risk in immigrant populations. In particular, immigrants might differ from their counterparts in the country of origin in terms of attitudes toward female genital cutting. Attitudes can differ because migrants represent a special sample of people from the country of origin or because immigrants acculturate after arriving in a new country. To examine these possibilities, we used a fully anonymous, computerized task to elicit implicit attitudes toward female genital cutting among Sudanese immigrants living in Switzerland and Sudanese people in Sudan. Results show that Sudanese immigrants in Switzerland were significantly more positive about uncut girls than Sudanese in Sudan, and that selective migration out of Sudan likely contributed substantially to this difference. We conclude by suggesting how our method could potentially be coupled with recent efforts to refine extrapolation methods for estimating cutting risk among immigrant populations. More broadly, our results highlight the need to better understand how heterogeneous attitudes can affect the risk of cutting among immigrant communities and in countries of origin.
We generalize Krugman's (1979) ‘new trade’ model by allowing for an explicit production chain in which a range of tasks is performed sequentially by a number of specialized teams. We demonstrate that an increase in market size induces a deeper division of labor among these teams which leads to an increase in firm productivity. The paper can be thought of as a formalization of Smith's (1776) famous theorem that the division of labor is limited by the extent of the market. It also sheds light on how market size differences can limit the scope for international technology transfers.
Claims that the VAT facilitates tax enforcement by generating paper trails on transactions between firms contributed to widespread VAT adoption worldwide, but there is surprisingly little evidence. This paper analyzes the role of third-party information for VAT enforcement through two randomized experiments among over 400,000 Chilean firms. Announcing additional monitoring has less impact on transactions that are subject to a paper trail, indicating the paper trail's preventive deterrence effect. This leads to strong enforcement spillovers up the VAT chain. These findings confirm that when taking evasion into account, significant differences emerge between otherwise equivalent forms of taxation.
What motivates regional governments to subsidize firm relocations and what are the implications of the subsidy competition among them? In this paper, I address these questions using a quantitative economic geography model which I calibrate to U.S. states. I show that states have strong incentives to subsidize firm relocations in order to gain at the expense of other states. I also show that subsidy competition creates large distortions so that there is much to gain from a cooperative approach. Overall, I find that manufacturing real income can be up to 3.9 percent higher if states stop competing over firms.
I show that accounting for cross-industry variation in trade elasticities greatly magnifies the estimated gains from trade. The main idea is as simple as it is general: while imports in the average industry do not matter too much, imports in some industries are critical to the functioning of the economy, so that a complete shutdown of international trade is very costly overall.
