Anti-Tobacco Regulations and Smoking in Russia

This study examines the impact of tax policy on cigarettes and cigarette smoking prevalence in the Russian Federation. We use data from the Russian Monitoring Survey of the Higher School of Economics (RLMS-HSE) for the period from 2013 to 2020. The study design is based on the difference-in-differences principle. To assess the impact of excise taxes on consumer behavior, panel logistic and panel linear regression analyses with fixed effects were applied. The results of the study indicate that the likelihood of smoking and the average number of cigarettes smoked per day decreased with an increase in tobacco excise taxes. However, individuals from regions with high smoking prevalence are less sensitive to changes in tax rates. Specifically, an increase in the logarithm of the tax by 1 leads to a 4.77% decrease in the probability of smoking in regions with low and 2.99% in regions with high smoking prevalence. It is also found that a 1% increase in the excise tax rate causes a 0.096% and 0.053% decrease in the number of cigarettes smoked in regions with low and high smoking prevalence, respectively.