Effects of Smoking on Productivity: Estimating Aggregate Production Technology Using Cross-Sectional Time Series Data

Abstract

The negative health effects of smoking are substantial and well documented. There are, however, few studies that focus on another aspect of the costs of smoking, namely its impact on productive activities, specifically in terms of productivity loss as a result of smoking. Previous economic studies of smoking tend to focus on the effectiveness of various smoking control measures, and the externalities of smoking in the form of higher health care costs that smokers impose on the wider community. The present study make use of aggregate time-series and cross-sectional data to carefully examine the relationship between smoking and productivity as measured by a properly specified and estimated agg..