Full title
Does the ban on the display of tobacco products in stores reduce tobacco sales? Explicit mechanisms vs. A black box approach to establish the counterfactual.
Abstract
On the 1st of January 2010 a ban on the public display of tobacco product at the point of sale was introduced in Norway. To answer what, if any, effect this had on the sale of tobacco it is necessary to create a counterfactual: What would the sale have been without the ban? This can be done by creating an explicit model of the mechanisms that affect tobacco sales, or by just extrapolating trends found in the data.
The talk will present results from both methods and it is based on work done by the author when he was an expert witness in the court case between the tobacco industry and the Norwegian government.