The Effect of Five Key Variables on Cigarette Consumption in the Eight Most Developed Countries

Abstract

The objective of this work is to investigate the effect of two quantitative (price (taxes included) of cigarettes per pack and personal income) and of three socioeconomic variables (education level, percentage of the population aged 15-24 and unemployment rate) on the quantity of cigarette consumption per capita per year for each of the eight countries: China, India, Japan, Russia, Brazil, USA, Germany and UK. Three different econometric methods were used, namely pooled cross-section time series, fixed and random effects to estimate cigarette consumption at the country level. The three models showed that cigarettes are a normal good (a necessity) and that an increase in income will cause an increase in cigarettes sales per individual age 15 and over. Moreover, the pooled OLS with cross-section specific coefficients model indicated that China, Japan, Russia, USA and Germany present negative cigarette price elasticity, Brazil presents positive price elasticity, while India and UK present price elasticity not significantly different from zero. The results of pooled OLS model for the three socioeconomic variables showed that their coefficient estimates are slightly negative and significantly different from zero. Once country-level unobserved heterogeneity was taken into account the models indicated, that countries with more university graduates have slightly lower cigarette sales per adult, while the other two socioeconomic variables were found to be statistically not significant.