Elasticities of Youth Demand for e-Cigarettes - A Commentary on Corrigan et al

Abstract

In a recent paper Corrigan et al (2020) claim that taxes on e-cigarette devices such as Juul will strongly diminish the demand for these devices by youth, and that reduction in demand will have clear beneficial health effects. In this commentary I show that their conclusion does not follow from the experiment they perform in arriving at their claim. Their laboratory experiment supporting the claims is seriously mis-constructed.