About

Don Kenkel is the Andrew Dickson White Professor in the Department of Economics at Cornell University. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1987. His academic interests include health economics and public economics, with a broad focus on the economics of disease prevention and health promotion. Kenkel has contributed to the field through his authorship of the chapter on 'Prevention' in the Handbook of Health Economics (2000). His research extensively examines the economics of public health policies, including alcohol taxes and policies to prevent alcohol problems, cigarette taxes to prevent youth smoking, and advertising strategies to promote smoking cessation. Currently, his research encompasses empirical studies of tobacco product regulations, cost-benefit analyses of tobacco regulations, tobacco taxation, and the market for e-cigarettes. His work has included studies on the economics of cigarette sales on Indian reservations, tobacco regulation, and the market dynamics of e-cigarettes. Kenkel's research provides valuable insights into the effectiveness and economic implications of various health-related policies and regulations.

Research topics

• Environmental health
• Medicine
• Computer Science
• Political Science
• Psychology
• Computer Security
• Economics
• Nursing
• Law
• Gerontology
• Public economics
• Physical therapy
• Microeconomics
• Business
• Statistics

Selected publications

• The Impact of Tobacco Regulations on Smoking and Vaping

  Southern Economic Journal · 2026-01-18

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  ABSTRACT The 2009 Tobacco Control Act granted the Food and Drug Administration broad authority to regulate cigarettes and other tobacco products, which was further expanded in 2016 to include e‐cigarettes. To study the impact of FDA tobacco regulations, we designed and conducted a discrete choice experiment to collect data on adult subjects' stated preferences for cigarettes, e‐cigarettes, and quitting. We find evidence that enacted, pending, and potential FDA regulations may have important influences on adult smokers' choices. We estimate that when the long‐delayed requirement of cigarette graphic warning labels is implemented, it could decrease the probability that adult smokers choose cigarettes by 5.30 percentage points. However, our results suggest that recent policy trends towards tighter regulation of e‐cigarettes might work in the opposite direction. We estimate that the FDA‐required warning label on e‐cigarettes increases the probability of cigarette choices by 1.9 percentage points. Based on the estimated effect of a flavor ban, our results suggest that full enforcement of FDA marketing denial orders for almost all flavored e‐cigarettes could increase the probability of cigarette choices by 2.8 percentage points. Finally, raising e‐cigarette prices mainly moves respondents away from e‐cigarettes towards combustible cigarettes rather than to attempting to quit tobacco products altogether.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Consumer preferences for cigarettes and heated tobacco products in Japan: evidence from a discrete choice experiment

  Applied Economics · 2025-10-07

  article1st author
  PublisherDOI

• Understanding the Demand‐Side of an Illegal Market: A Case Study of the Prohibition of Menthol Cigarettes

  Health Economics · 2025-02-19

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Economic research has long focused on illegal markets and the consequences of prohibitions. We provide a case study of the proposed prohibition of menthol cigarettes, which are smoked by almost 19 million people in the U.S. Illegal markets for menthol cigarettes could not only blunt the prohibition's intended consequence to reduce smoking but could also lead to unintended consequences. We use data from a discrete choice experiment. Our mixed logit model predicts a substantial potential consumer demand for illegal menthol cigarettes, especially if menthol e-cigarettes are also illegal.

  PublisherDOI

• Just what the doctor ordered? The benefits and costs of e‐cigarette regulation in Australia

  Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics · 2024-12-31 · 1 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Australia had adopted a novel approach to e‐cigarette policy by requiring a physician's prescription to lawfully obtain nicotine e‐cigarettes. We conducted an online discrete choice experiment to gauge how adult Australian smokers made hypothetical choices between cigarettes, prescription e‐cigarettes, non‐prescription e‐cigarettes and quitting. We estimate a mixed logit model, which allows us to predict the market shares under different policy scenarios. The mixed logit model also provides estimates of consumer willingness to pay for the benefits from the prescription status of e‐cigarettes and the costs of illegal e‐cigarette markets. We estimate that the average utility loss from an illegal retail market is worth AU$7.90 per pack equivalent. We use the corresponding estimates of the compensating variations in income to conduct cost–benefit analyses of possible reforms to Australian e‐cigarette regulation. In aggregate, we estimate that the benefits of allowing but not requiring prescriptions of e‐cigarettes are AU$1.8 billion per year. Our paper provides a novel contribution to research on e‐cigarette regulation and provides a case study for the policy implementation in Australia. Our paper is also part of our research agenda to explore and develop methods to conduct policy analysis and cost–benefit analysis of regulatory policies that might create illegal markets.

  PublisherDOI

• Misinformation, consumer risk perceptions, and markets: The impact of an information shock on vaping and smoking cessation

  Economic Inquiry · 2024 · 3 citations

  • Computer Security
  • Computer Science
  • Business

  Abstract We study the impact of an information shock created by an outbreak of lung injuries apparently related to e‐cigarettes. We use data from multiple sources: surveys of risk perceptions conducted before, during, and after the outbreak; an in‐depth survey on risk perceptions and vaping and smoking behavior; and national aggregate time‐series sales data. We find that after the outbreak, consumer perceptions of the riskiness of e‐cigarettes sharply increased. From our estimated e‐cigarette demand models, we conclude that the information shock reduced e‐cigarette demand and the use of e‐cigarettes for smoking cessation by about 30 percent.

  PublisherDOI

• Are menthol smokers different? An economic perspective

  Southern Economic Journal · 2023 · 2 citations

  • Political Science
  • Economics
  • Public economics

  Abstract More than 18.5 million current smokers in the United States usually smoke menthol cigarettes. The Food and Drug Administration recently proposed a tobacco product standard to prohibit menthol as a characterizing flavor in cigarettes. We explore whether there are internality‐based market failures that provide an applied welfare economics rationale to prohibit menthol. Our empirical approach provides descriptive evidence from the 2018 to 2019 Tobacco Use Supplement to the Current Population Survey on how menthol use is associated with smokers' market demand along multiple intensive and extensive margins. We also use measures of smoking‐related misinformation and internalities, and stated preference data, from a 2021 Cornell Online Survey. We acknowledge that the associations we document in observational data might reflect bias due to self‐selection into menthol use. We leave it to the reader whether there is convincing evidence that differential levels of internality‐based market failures are a sufficient justification for the proposed prohibition of menthol cigarettes.

  PublisherDOI

• Evaluation of a civic engagement approach to catalyze built environment change and promote healthy eating and physical activity among rural residents: a cluster (community) randomized controlled trial

  BMC Public Health · 2022 · 15 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Medicine
  • Environmental health
  • Gerontology

  BACKGROUND: Prior studies demonstrate associations between risk factors for obesity and related chronic diseases (e.g., cardiovascular disease) and features of the built environment. This is particularly true for rural populations, who have higher rates of obesity, cancer, and other chronic diseases than urban residents. There is also evidence linking health behaviors and outcomes to social factors such as social support, opposition, and norms. Thus, overlapping social networks that have a high degree of social capital and community cohesion, such as those found in rural communities, may be effective targets for introducing and maintaining healthy behaviors. METHODS: This study will evaluate the effectiveness of the Change Club (CC) intervention, a civic engagement intervention for built environment change to improve health behaviors and outcomes for residents of rural communities. The CC intervention provides small groups of community residents (approximately 10-14 people) with nutrition and physical activity lessons and stepwise built environment change planning workshops delivered by trained extension educators via in-person, virtual, or hybrid methods. We will conduct process, multilevel outcome, and cost evaluations of implementation of the CC intervention in a cluster randomized controlled trial in 10 communities across two states using a two-arm parallel design. Change in the primary outcome, American Heart Association's Life's Simple 7 composite cardiovascular health score, will be evaluated among CC members, their friends and family members, and other community residents and compared to comparable samples in control communities. We will also evaluate changes at the social/collective level (e.g., social cohesion, social trust) and examine costs as well as barriers and facilitators to implementation. DISCUSSION: Our central hypothesis is the CC intervention will improve health behaviors and outcomes among engaged citizens and their family and friends within 24 months. Furthermore, we hypothesize that positive changes will catalyze critical steps in the pathway to improving longer-term health among community residents through improved healthy eating and physical activity opportunities. This study also represents a unique opportunity to evaluate process and cost-related data, which will provide key insights into the viability of this approach for widespread dissemination. TRIAL REGISTRATION: ClinicalTrials.gov: NCT05002660 , Registered 12 August 2021.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Analysis Points to Important Research Gaps About the Impact of E-cigarettes

  Nicotine & Tobacco Research · 2020-10-02 · 1 citations

  letterOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• To Smoke or to Vape: The Role of Flavors, Health Warnings, and Price

  6th Biennial Conference of the American Society of Health Economists · 2016-06-14

  article1st authorCorresponding
  Publisher

• Retrospective and Prospective Benefit-Cost Analyses of U.S. Anti-Smoking Policies

  Journal of Benefit-Cost Analysis · 2015-01-01 · 34 citations

  articleOpen access

  Regulatory policies designed to improve societal welfare by “nudging” consumers to make better choices are increasingly popular. The application of benefit-cost analysis (BCA) to this sort of regulation confronts difficult theoretical and applied issues. In this analysis we contribute a worked example of behavioral BCA of U.S. anti-smoking policies. Our conceptual framework extends the standard market-based approach to BCA to allow for individual failures to make lifetime-utility-maximizing choices of cigarette consumption. We discuss how our market-based approach compares to the health benefits approach and the “consumer surplus offset” controversy in recent BCAs of several health-related regulations. We use a dynamic population model to make counterfactual simulations of smoking prevalence rates and cigarette demand over time. In our retrospective BCA the simulation results imply that the overall impact of anti-smoking policies from 1964 to 2010 is to reduce the total cigarette consumption by 28%. At a discount rate of 3% the 1964–present value of the consumer benefits from anti-smoking policies through 2010 is estimated to be $573 billion ($2010). Although we are unable to develop a hard estimate of the policies’ costs, we discuss evidence that suggests the consumer benefits substantially outweigh the costs. We then turn to a prospective BCA of future anti-smoking Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulations. At a discount rate of 3%, the 2010–present value of the consumer benefits 30 years into the future from a simulated FDA tobacco regulation is estimated to be $100 billion. However, the nature of potential FDA tobacco regulations suggests that they might impose additional costs on consumers that make it less clear that the net benefits of the regulations will be positive.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• NIH Grant R01HD048828

  NIH · $998k · 2011

Frequent coauthors

• Dean R. Lillard

  The Ohio State University

  9 shared

• Alan Mathios

  Cornell University

  9 shared

• Hua Wang

  Huazhong University of Science and Technology

  4 shared

• Philip DeCicca

  United States Department of State

  4 shared

• Feng Liu

  3 shared

• Hua Wang

  Cornell University

  2 shared

• Lawrence Jin

  National University of Singapore

  2 shared

• Priscilla Ayine

  Center for Advancing Health

  1 shared