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On the concept of health capital and the demand for health -- The human capital model -- The correlation between health and schooling -- An exploration of the dynamic relationship between health and cognitive development in adolescence -- Parental education and child health : evidence from a natural experiment in Taiwan -- Women's education : harbinger of another spring? Evidence from a natural experiment in Turkey -- Variations in infant mortality rates among counties of the United States : the roles of public policies and programs -- Determinants of neonatal mortality rates in the U.S. : a reduced form model -- Birth outcome productions function in the U.S. -- Unobservables, pregnancy resolutions, and birthweight production functions in New York City -- The impact of national health insurance on birth outcomes : a natural experiment in Taiwan -- The effects of government regulation on teenage smoking -- Beer taxes, the legal drinking age, and youth motor vehicle fatalities -- Effects of alcoholic beverage prices and legal drinking ages on youth alcohol use -- Rational addiction and the effect of price on consumption -- An empirical analysis of cigarette addiction -- An empirical analysis of alcohol addiction : results from the monitoring the future panels -- The demand for cocaine by young adults : a rational addiction approach -- An economic analysis of adult obesity : results from the behavioral risk factor surveillance system -- Fast-food restaurant advertising on television and its influence on childhood obesity -- Food prices and body fatness among youths

"I discuss economic approaches to the demand for harmfully addictive substances and estimate time-series demand functions for the period from 1975 through 2003. My estimates suggest that changes in price can explain a good deal of the observed changes in cigarette smoking, binge alcohol drinking, and marijuana use by high school seniors. For example, the 70 percent increase in the real price of cigarettes since 1997 due to the Medicaid Master Settlement Agreement explains almost all of the 12 percentage point reduction in the cigarette smoking participation rate since that year. The 7 percent increase in the real price of beer between 1990 and 1992 due to the Federal excise tax hike on that beverage in 1991 accounts for almost 90 percent of the 4 percentage point decline in binge drinking in the period at issue. The wide swings in the real price of marijuana explain 70 percent of the reduction in particpation from 1975 to 1992, 60 percent of the subsequent growth to 1997, and almost 60 percent of the decline since that year. I conclude with implications for tax policy and for the lively and contentious debate concerning the legalization of marijuana, cocaine, and heroin"--National Bureau of Economic Research web site

"The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of alcohol policies in reducing the incidence of sexually transmitted diseases among youth. Previous research has shown that risky sexual practices (e.g., unprotected sex and multiple partners) that increase the risk of contracting a STD are highly correlated with alcohol use. If alcohol is a cause of risky sexual behavior, then policies that reduce the consumption of alcohol may also reduce the incidence of STDs. In this paper, we examine the relationship between alcohol policies (e.g., beer taxes and statutes pertaining to alcohol sales and drunk driving) and rates of gonorrhea and AIDS among teenagers and young adults. Results indicate that higher beer taxes are associated with lower rates of gonorrhea for males and are suggestive of lower AIDS rates. Strict drunk driving policies in the form of zero tolerance laws may also lower the gonorrhea rate among males under the legal drinking age"--National Bureau of Economic Research web site