Cost-benefit analysis involving addictive goods: contingent valuation to estimate willingness-to-pay for smoking cessation.
@article{Weimer2009CostbenefitAI,
title={Cost-benefit analysis involving addictive goods: contingent valuation to estimate willingness-to-pay for smoking cessation.},
author={David L. Weimer and Aidan R. Vining and Randall K. Thomas},
journal={Health economics},
year={2009},
volume={18 2},
pages={
181-202
}
}The valuation of changes in consumption of addictive goods resulting from policy interventions presents a challenge for cost-benefit analysts. Consumer surplus losses from reduced consumption of addictive goods that are measured relative to market demand schedules overestimate the social cost of cessation interventions. This article seeks to show that consumer surplus losses measured using a non-addicted demand schedule provide a better assessment of social cost. Specifically, (1) it develops…
42 Citations
Valuing Regulations Affecting Addictive or Habitual Goods
- EconomicsJournal of Benefit-Cost Analysis
- 2015
The analysis of regulations affecting addictive or habitual goods has drawn considerable controversy. Some studies have suggested that such regulations have only small welfare benefits, as consumers…
Economic Approaches to Estimating Benefits of Regulations Affecting Addictive Goods.
- Economics, BusinessAmerican journal of preventive medicine
- 2016
Addiction surplus: the add-on margin that makes addictive consumptions difficult to contain.
- EconomicsThe International journal on drug policy
- 2015
Measuring consumer surplus in the case of addiction: A re-examination of the rational benchmark algebra
- Economics
- 2020
Measuring consumer surplus for addicted consumers is challenging because the presence of internalities makes the observed demand schedule a biased basis to estimate the actual welfare experienced by…
Estimating the benefits of public health policies that reduce harmful consumption.
- EconomicsHealth economics
- 2015
This paper presents a general framework for analyzing policies that are designed to reduce inefficiently high consumption and provides a rule of thumb for the relationship between net and gross consumer welfare effects: where there exists a plausible estimate of the tax that would allow consumers to fully internalize health costs, the ratio of the income tax to the per-unit long-term cost can provide an upper bound on the ratios of net to gross benefits.
Tobacco Regulation and Cost-Benefit Analysis: How Should We Value Foregone Consumer Surplus?
- EconomicsAmerican Journal of Health Economics
- 2018
The history of the FDA's recent attempts to regulate cigarettes and other tobacco products and how they have valued foregone consumer surplus in cost-benefit analyses are outlined and a more general behavioral public finance framework for welfare analysis is advocated.
Retrospective and Prospective Benefit-Cost Analyses of U.S. Anti-Smoking Policies 1
- Business, MedicineJournal of Benefit-Cost Analysis
- 2015
A worked example of behavioral BCA of U.S. anti-smoking policies is contributed and a conceptual framework extends the standard market-based approach to BCA to allow for individual failures to make lifetime-utility-maximizing choices of cigarette consumption.
The U.S. Tobacco Buyout: A Partial and General Equilibrium Analysis
- EconomicsJournal of Agricultural and Applied Economics
- 2013
This article analyzes the impact of removing the U.S. tobacco program in both a partial and general welfare economics framework. In a partial-equilibrium framework, a consumer tax-funded quota buyout…
When health policy and empirical evidence collide: the case of cigarette package warning labels and economic consumer surplus.
- Political ScienceAmerican journal of public health
- 2014
In its graphic warning label regulations on cigarette packages, the Food and Drug Administration severely discounts the benefits of reduced smoking because of the lost "pleasure" smokers experience…
Behavioral Economics for Cost-Benefit Analysis: Benefit Validity When Sovereign Consumers Seem to Make Mistakes
- Economics, Psychology
- 2017
How should policy analysts assess 'benefit validity' when behavioral anomalies appear relevant? David L. Weimer provides thoughtful answers through practical guidelines. Behavioral economists have…
References
SHOWING 1-10 OF 50 REFERENCES
Addiction as a market failure: using rational addiction results to justify tobacco regulation.
- EconomicsJournal of health economics
- 2000
Value to smokers of improved cessation products: evidence from a willingness-to-pay survey.
- MedicineNicotine & tobacco research : official journal of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco
- 2004
The present study suggests the validity of using willingness-to-pay surveys in assessing the value of new smoking cessation products and products with multifaceted improvements and calculated estimates of thevalue of a quit.
The Economics of Smoking
- Economics, Political Science
- 1991
While the tobacco industry is among the most substantial and successful economic enterprises, tobacco consumption kills more people than any other product. Economic analysis of tobacco product…
Tobacco Taxes and Public Policy to Discourage Smoking
- EconomicsTax Policy and the Economy
- 1999
In this paper, we present evidence of the likely impact of cigarette tax hikes on consumers, governments, and producers. We show that 100 percent of a tax hike is passed onto consumers in the form of…
Benefit-cost analysis of addiction treatment: methodological guidelines and empirical application using the DATCAP and ASI.
- MedicineHealth services research
- 2002
The study demonstrates one way to combine economic and clinical data and offers a methodological foundation for future economic evaluations of addiction treatment and provides a practical benefit-cost analysis of real-world treatment programs.
The value of risk-free cigarettes--do smokers underestimate the risk?
- Medicine, Political ScienceHealth economics
- 2004
Using medical data on life shortening effects of smoking, the results indicate rather low values put on a lost life-year, compared to most existing estimates based on other methods, which may indicate that smokers do underestimate the health risk of smoking.
The Price of Smoking
- Medicine
- 2004
The first study to quantify the cost of smoking in this way, or in such depth, this accessible book adds a weapon to the arsenal of antismoking messages but also provides a framework for assessment that can be applied to other health behaviors.
Health care contingent valuation studies: a review and classification of the literature.
- Medicine, Political ScienceHealth economics
- 1998
There is wide variation among health care CVM studies in terms of the types of questions being posed and the elicitation formats being used, and the applicability to health care of the CVM guidelines issued by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration panel for environmental economics is unclear.
Benefit-cost in the California treatment outcome project: does substance abuse treatment "pay for itself"?
- Medicine, PsychologyHealth services research
- 2006
Even without considering the direct value to clients of improved health and quality of life, allocating taxpayer dollars to substance abuse treatment may be a wise investment.




