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Can a smoking ban save your heart?
Author(s) -
Mazzonna Fabrizio,
Salari Paola
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
health economics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.55
H-Index - 109
eISSN - 1099-1050
pISSN - 1057-9230
DOI - 10.1002/hec.3778
Subject(s) - externality , myocardial infarction , smoking ban , metric (unit) , inequality , environmental health , medicine , incidence (geometry) , public health , business , public economics , economics , cardiology , marketing , microeconomics , nursing , mathematical analysis , physics , mathematics , optics
This paper evaluates the causal effect of environmental tobacco exposure on health by exploiting the time and geographical variation in public‐place smoking bans implemented in Switzerland between 2007 and 2011. We use administrative data on hospitalizations for acute myocardial infarction, which allow to measure the short‐run effects of the policy on an objective metric of health. We show that the incidence of acute myocardial infarction decreases by approximately 8% immediately after implementation of the law with large heterogeneity across regions. Our results indicate that the policy was effective in reducing the negative externality of smoking with potential spillovers on health inequality.