The effects of the tobacco tax and prevention act in reducing smoking behavior have been extensively examined and confirmed, which provides a policy basis for the prevention of smoking. Previous studies in terms of micro data, however, mainly focus on the concurrent impact of a single-wave tax implementation. Little evidence has been known on the persistent effect of single wave shock or dynamic impact of several tax shocks on teenager’s smoking behaviors. By using three longitudinal surveys of Taiwanese youths, this study investigate the dynamic impacts of three-wave tobacco taxes implemented in 2002, 2006, and 2009 in Taiwan on teenager’s smoking. Our results show that the first-wave tobacco tax performed a largest impact on reducing teenagers’ smoking and onset smoking behaviors. With 1% increasing in tobacco price, the probabilities of smoking and onset smoking decreased by 0.021-0.022 and 0.019-0.020 for teenagers born in 1988, 1986 and 1984. The negative impacts of the first-wave tax shock declined gradually with age. Comparing among three waves of tobacco tax shocks, our results depict that the impacts of tax shocks decreased as teenagers aged. The average effects of the first, second, and third tax shocks are -0.02, -0.012, and -0.007, respectively. Keywords: Tobacco taxes, Teenager’s smoking, Dynamic impact
