The Risk of Gambling Problems in the General Population: A Reconsideration.

We examine the manner in which the population prevalence of disordered gambling has usually been estimated, on the basis of surveys that suffer from a potential sample selection bias. General population surveys screen respondents using seemingly innocuous "trigger," "gateway" or "diagnostic stem" questions, applied before they ask the actual questions about gambling behavior and attitudes. Modeling the latent sample selection behavior generated by these trigger questions using up-to-date econometrics for sample selection bias correction leads to dramatically different inferences about population prevalence and comorbidities with other psychiatric disorders.

Disordered Gambling Prevalence: Methodological Innovations in a General Danish Population Survey.

We study Danish adult gambling behavior with an emphasis on discovering patterns relevant to public health forecasting and economic welfare assessment of policy. Methodological innovations include measurement of formative in addition to reflective constructs, estimation of prospective risk for developing gambling disorder rather than risk of being falsely negatively diagnosed, analysis with attention to sample weights and correction for sample selection bias, estimation of the impact of trigger questions on prevalence estimates and sample characteristics, and distinguishing between total and marginal effects of risk-indicating factors. The most significant novelty in our design is that nobody was excluded on the basis of their response to a 'trigger' or 'gateway' question about previous gambling history.

Individual discount rates and smoking: evidence from a field experiment in Denmark.

We elicit measures of individual discount rates from a representative sample of the Danish population and test two substantive hypotheses. The first hypothesis is that smokers have higher individual discount rates than non-smokers. The second hypothesis is that smokers are more likely to have time inconsistent preferences than non-smokers, where time inconsistency is indicated by a hyperbolic discounting function.