Smoking

Well written and accessible to a broad audience....The book is well worth reading for anyone interested in these topics. --Journal of Economic Literature A thought provoking book that will be of interest to researchers and policy makers concerned with smoking and public health. --British Medical Journal As much as any economist, Viscusi has undertaken the difficult task of disciplining formal models with detailed observation of actual judgements and behaviors. Smoking: Making the Risky Decision is a milestone in this long-term project, a book with theoretical and practical importance. --Baruch Fischhoff, Carnegie Mellon University This book combines two disciplines, cognitive psychology and the economics of risk, to make an important contribution to the smoking debate. Viscusi shows that persons in all age groups overestimate smoking risks, as theory predicts, and that persons behave rationally respecting the smoking decision given their perception of the facts. After these findings, the smoking decision can justifiably be regulated only in consequence of third party effects, not because consumers make poor health choices.--Alan Schwartz, Yale Law School This book has a point of view that is underrepresented in the debate over smoking policy--that the objective of public policy should not be a smoke-free society, but risk taking based on accurate information and promoting competition for safer cigarettes. --Joseph P. Newhouse, Harvard MedicalSchool