What Can We Learn about Smoking from 150 Years of Italian Data?

Abstract

This paper estimates dynamic demand models for tobacco consumption in Italy from 1871 to 2010. The empirical analysis is based on an entirely new dataset. Because the tobacco sector was mostly managed by the state, rich and detailed historical documentation is available. Price elasticities are estimated both for aggregate tobacco consumption and its four major components (cigars, cigarettes, cut tobacco, and snuff) for three separate sub-periods: 1871-1913, 1919-1939, and 1946-2010. Elasticities consistently belong to a narrow set. We discuss the public policy implications of a seemingly iso-elastic tobacco demand function.Key words: Long run, tobacco consumption, price and income elasticity of demand.JEL codes: C22, D12, N43. This paper offers a detailed quantitative account of secular trends in tobacco consumption in Italy. The case of long-term tobacco consumption represents a fascinating research topic for a number of reasons. First, the sector is very well documented. Since the nineteenth century, the import, production, and sale of tobacco in Italy have often been run by the government under a regime of

An econometric analysis of the demand for cigarettes in Italy after the introduction of heated tobacco products in 2016

“…4. According to Ciccarelli et al . (2018), cigarette consumption is generally insensitive to variations in the price of other tobacco products such as cigars, fine-cut and snuff.…”

“…The "reverse" causal relationship between HTPs and FMC, the former affecting the latter, should also be accounted for as a basis for broad policies against smoking. Ciccarelli et al (2018), cigarette consumption is generally insensitive to variations in the price of other tobacco products such as cigars, fine-cut and snuff. For instance, they provide evidence that cigars have been a strong complement of cigarettes in the more recent period of their sample whereas the opposite does not hold.…”

“…Nevertheless, despite the large consensus supporting the ban, the Italian Government operated in a framework of substantial inelastic demand, with a low degree of substitutability with other traditional products, and traditionally exploited such a condition to maximize revenues. In fact, as pointed out in Ciccarelli et al (2018), it arises that substitution effects among alternative ways of consuming tobacco are quite frequent in the long-run. Such a substitution historically determined a gradual substitution for other tobacco products by cigarettes, and complementarity rather than substitution arose as a relatively more significant phenomenon [4].…”

Research on the Physical Properties of Cut Tobacco under Different Storage Conditions

“…Jun Sun et al explored Identification of moisture content in cut tobacco plant leaves using outlier sample eliminating algorithms and hyperspectral data [5]. At present, the environmental temperature and humidity of the storage process, the storage time has process requirements, but the storage time is relatively wide (3-120h) [6], and cut tobacco is a porous medium, and there will be hygroscopic and dehumidification phenomena in the storage process, and there are few studies on the moisture and water activity of cut tobacco in the produce process [7], in order to further study the law of moisture and texture change of cut tobacco in the storage process, this study is specially carried out in order to provide data support for the storage of cut tobacco.…”