Rationally Addicted to Cigarettes, Alcohol and Coffee? A Pseudo Panel Approach

Abstract

In this paper, using pseudo panel data we analyze the relation between cigarette, alcohol, and coffee consumption within the rational addiction framework. Our purpose in this study is twofold. First, we want to get more insights about behavioral processes concerning cigarette, alcohol and coffee consumption. Second, we hope that our attempt to generalize rational addiction model to include three addictive goods will be useful to generate further research in the related literature. We found that cross price elasticity of cigarette with respect to alcohol price is negative, while cross price elasticity of alcohol with respect to cigarette price is positive. We believe that drinking works as a trigger for smoking especially in social settings like bars while it is also possible that people who want to cut cigarette consumption might increase alcohol consumption to cope with resulting stress, which induces an asymmetry in cross price elasticities. We did not find a strong relation between coffee consumption and the consumption of cigarette and alcohol. This finding does not rule out the possibility that coffee and cigarette are complements for certain people. However there is not a significant complementarity relationship when we look at the whole population.