Seminar - Impact of Tobacco Advertising Restrictions in Switzerland

The Lausanne Center for Health Economics, Behavior, and Policy (LCHE) regularly organizes seminars about Health Economics. More details on www.lche.ch.

Topic of the Seminar

Impact of Tobacco Advertising Restrictions in Switzerland: A Staggered DiD Study

The study assesses the impact of tobacco billboard bans on smoking in Switzerland. The staggered policy introduction across cantons is exploited, using novel estimators that are robust to treatment effect heterogeneity. 

Based on retrospective smoking histories from the Swiss Health Survey, a rich panel dataset spanning from 1993 to 2017 is reconstructed. 

Preliminary results indicate that tobacco billboard bans lead to a statistically significant but modest reduction in smoking rates. The effect is driven by women and individuals aged 25–44 and 65+, and persists up to five years after policy introduction.

Speaker

• Andreas Stoller, University of Freiburg

Andreas Stoller is a third-year PhD student in Economics at the University of Fribourg, under the supervision of Professor Martin Huber. 

His doctoral research evaluates the effectiveness of prevention policies such as tobacco taxation, billboard advertising bans for tobacco products, and regulations on e-cigarettes and heated tobacco products. His work focuses on applying causal inference methods for impact and policy evaluation, with a particular emphasis on causal machine learning. He holds an MSc in Economics from HEC Lausanne and has previously worked at the Swiss Federal Statistical Office and the University of Basel.

Practical information

• Free admission
• No need to register
• This seminar is given in English
• This conference is possible on WebEx or on site at Unisanté New building Valine  (Vennes)

About LCHE

The Lausanne Center for Health Economics, Behavior, and Policy (LCHE) at the University of Lausanne (UNIL) promotes research, teaching, and policy advice in the fields of health economics, behavior, and policy.

The interdisciplinary center brings together researchers of the Center for Primary Care and Public Health (Unisanté), the Faculty of Biology and Medicine (CHUV-FBM), and the Faculty of Business and Economics (HEC).