Essays on applied econometrics

This dissertation presents three essays on applied econometrics. The first two chapters study topics in health economics, estimating the effectiveness of Italy’s smoking ban in reducing tobacco consumption and the effect of residential mobility on birth outcomes. The third chapter re-evaluates information on global food consumption. The first chapter is a joint work with Emilia Del Bono and Daniela Vuri. The effectiveness of smoke-free legislations in reducing tobacco consumption is a broadly discussed topic in health economics. Most studies do not find any evidence of a reduction of smoking after bans. Among the international literature, the case of Italy is an exception, where virtually all studies do find a reduced smoking prevalence and consumption after the ban. We show that the latter estimates are biased due to the fact that they do not take into account seasonal differences in smoking behaviour. Once controlling for seasonal variation in smoking, we find no impact of the smoking ban for the overall population, being therefore in opposition to the existing literature. European Union has declared the mobilization of the labour market as a key policy goal. Unlike many other studies which focus on the impact of geographic mobility on labour market outcomes, the second chapter analyses its effect on health. Birth weight data from Italian birth certificates provide objective health indicators to this study. Controlling for mother fixed effects, no effect of mobility on overall birth outcomes can be estimated. However, depending on the type of the move and socio-economic status of the mother, effects are found to be strongly heterogeneous. The third chapter presents a method to improve the information on food consumption patterns of food balance sheets (FBS). FBS are the single most important data source for national food supply and utilization. A model based on a cross-entropy measure of information has been developed in order to inform FBS data with data from national household budget surveys. Overall, 51 low and middle income countries are considered. The results provide updated food consumption data for over 40% of the world’s population.