Although cigarette producers knew that nicotine was addictive in the early 1960's, this information was not publicly known until the 1979 Surgeon General's Report. This study finds that the release of addiction information caused a structural shift in cigarette demand and estimates the value of...

The US Food and Drug Administration confirmed in February 2007 that a major foodborne illness outbreak was caused by two peanut butter brands, Peter Pan and Great Value, manufactured by ConAgra Foods Inc. at its Sylvester, Georgia, processing plant. As a result, on February 14, 2007, ConAgra...

This study attempts to evaluate the economic benefits of the country of origin labeling (COOL) in Taiwan. A Vickrey second-price sealed-bid auction was conducted to estimate the consumer’s willingness to pay for Taiwan products vs. those from China and Vietnam. Our experiment was designed to...

Although the WIC food assistance program purchases over one-half of all US infant formula, I find the program has little impact on the prices paid by non-WIC customers. I estimate infant-formula marginal cost and find that it is low compared to price, implying large price-cost markups. But, the...

In order to reduce obesity and associated costs, policymakers are considering various policies, including taxes, to change consumers’ high-calorie consumption habits. We investigate two sweet tax policies aimed at reducing added sweetener consumption. Both a consumption tax on sweet goods and...

An experiment was conducted to investigate the interaction between consumers’ past eating behaviors, risk perceptions and future information processing procedure. In the study, participants were required to choose whether or not to eat chicken that was potentially be tainted with Avian...

The knowledge of the overall willingness-to-pay and the specific price premiums consumers accept when buying foods with less fat, saturated fat, sodium, sugar and more fiber shapes food manufacturer and distributor marketing strategies and supports the development of public health strategies....

The proposed paper belongs to the literature on food demand and optimal taxation and to the literature dealing with economics of alcohol production and consumption. We investigate the question of optimal taxation for the commodity whose consumption has positive and negative features both for...

Behavioral economists maintain that addictions such as alcoholism, smoking and over-eating represent examples of present-bias in decision making that is fundamentally irrational. In this article, we develop a model of present bias and apparently hyperbolic discounting that is fully consistent...