Obesity, Smoking, and Time Preference
A little digging reveals that the American public health profession's academic journals seem to be filled with articles on time preference and all kinds of diseases and ailments. I know that the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, which is the top school in the field, requires a course or two in economics. Here's one article:
"Obesity and the Rate of Time Preference," by Joh Komlos (Univ. of Munich), Patricia Smith (Univ. of Michigan), and Barry Gogin (Univ. of Michigan).
Another is an NBER Working Paper entitled "Why Do Dancers Smoke? Smoking, Time Preference, and Wage Dynamics," by Lalith Munasinghe and Nachum Sicherman (Columbia Univ.). "Smokers compared to their non-smoker counterparts earn lower wages at the time when they first enter the labor market and experience substantially lower rates of wage growth . . . . These diferences . . . are consistent with our time preference hypothesis . . ."
Here is Mises on time preference. Then, of course, here is Hoppe speaking on time preference.
Comments (1)
I'm a dancer and I noticed that dancers do smoke frequently. Why do they do this? Here is a view from a dancer's rather than an aspiring Central Planner's perspective. The majority of dancer's can expect to earn little in their chosen "career". Most will say they do it out of a love of doing it. What this means no doubt others will be able to poke, prod or beat out of some future sample of dancers in the future. "Career" life is usually to the age of 35.
Appearance is widely held to effect one's career success. And there is a fear of putting on weight. At the same time dancer's are required by their discipline to be athletic. During training sessions there are frequent shortish breaks. It is at these times that many smoking dancers choose to smoke rather than take a snack.
Hopefully this will help you decide whther smoking by dancers or others is determined or in any way causally related to so called time preferences.
Published: February 12, 2005 11:19 PM