PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Diana S. Lien
AU  - William N. Evans
TI  - Estimating the Impact of Large Cigarette Tax Hikes
AID  - 10.3368/jhr.XL.2.373
DP  - 2005 Mar 31
TA  - Journal of Human Resources
PG  - 373--392
VI  - XL
IP  - 2
4099  - http://jhr.uwpress.org/content/XL/2/373.short
4100  - http://jhr.uwpress.org/content/XL/2/373.full
SO  - J Hum Resour2005 Mar 31; XL
AB  - Using a statistical matching procedure to choose control groups, we find that four states that adopted large cigarette tax hikes had corresponding decreases in smoking participation of pregnant women. Using the tax hike as an instrument for smoking in birth-weight equations and pooling data across experiments, we find that smoking during pregnancy doubles the chance an infant is born with a low birth weight. Our estimates are similar to single-equation estimates where maternal smoking is treated as exogenous.