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Ahmed Jaber

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Papers by Ahmed Jaber

Research paper thumbnail of The Inter-generational and Social Transmission of Cultural Traits: Theory and Evidence from Smoking Behavior

The extant literature on cultural transmission takes competing cultures in society as given and p... more The extant literature on cultural transmission takes competing cultures in society as given and parental cultural preferences as fixed. We relax these assumptions by endogenizing both societal and parental preferences. We use smoking as a case-study of a cultural trait which did not always exist, and which over time has switched from being perceived as socially acceptable to being perceived as undesirable. In our model, parents' preferred cultural traits depend on the perceived health costs of smoking, and societal preferences depend on the behavior of a tobacco industry that aims to maximize smoking prevalence. We derive conditions for the emergence and persistence of the smoking habit, and find new implications for the relationship between parental and societal influences. We then test explicitly for the validity of our theoretical framework using novel US data. We find that our framework is able to capture features of smoking behavior which existing models are unable to explain.

Research paper thumbnail of Dying for a smoke: How much does differential mortality of smokers affect estimated life-course smoking prevalence?

Preventive medicine, 2011

Objective-An extensive literature uses reconstructed historical smoking rates by birth-cohort to ... more Objective-An extensive literature uses reconstructed historical smoking rates by birth-cohort to inform anti-smoking policies. This paper examines whether and how these rates change when one adjusts for differential mortality of smokers and non-smokers. generate life-course smoking prevalence rates by age-cohort. With cause-specific death rates from secondary sources and an improved method, we correct for differential mortality, and we test whether adjusted and unadjusted rates statistically differ. With US data (National Health Interview Survey, 1967, we also compare contemporaneously measured smoking prevalence rates with the equivalent rates from retrospective data.

Research paper thumbnail of The Inter-generational and Social Transmission of Cultural Traits: Theory and Evidence from Smoking Behavior

The extant literature on cultural transmission takes competing cultures in society as given and p... more The extant literature on cultural transmission takes competing cultures in society as given and parental cultural preferences as fixed. We relax these assumptions by endogenizing both societal and parental preferences. We use smoking as a case-study of a cultural trait which did not always exist, and which over time has switched from being perceived as socially acceptable to being perceived as undesirable. In our model, parents' preferred cultural traits depend on the perceived health costs of smoking, and societal preferences depend on the behavior of a tobacco industry that aims to maximize smoking prevalence. We derive conditions for the emergence and persistence of the smoking habit, and find new implications for the relationship between parental and societal influences. We then test explicitly for the validity of our theoretical framework using novel US data. We find that our framework is able to capture features of smoking behavior which existing models are unable to explain.

Research paper thumbnail of Dying for a smoke: How much does differential mortality of smokers affect estimated life-course smoking prevalence?

Preventive medicine, 2011

Objective-An extensive literature uses reconstructed historical smoking rates by birth-cohort to ... more Objective-An extensive literature uses reconstructed historical smoking rates by birth-cohort to inform anti-smoking policies. This paper examines whether and how these rates change when one adjusts for differential mortality of smokers and non-smokers. generate life-course smoking prevalence rates by age-cohort. With cause-specific death rates from secondary sources and an improved method, we correct for differential mortality, and we test whether adjusted and unadjusted rates statistically differ. With US data (National Health Interview Survey, 1967, we also compare contemporaneously measured smoking prevalence rates with the equivalent rates from retrospective data.

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