Smoking bans make (some) smokers happy

A recent IZA Discussion Paper by Reto Odermatt and Alois Stutzer shows that smoking bans increase the happiness of smokers who recently failed to quit smoking. Other than that bans are not related to subjective well-being. The authors analyze data for 40 European countries and regions between 1990 and 2011 and exploit the staggered introduction of bans to tease out the effect of smoking base on individual well-being. They also find that higher cigarette prices reduce the life satisfaction of likely smokers.