This study was prepared by Nina Czernich while she was working with the Ifo Institute for Economic Research.It was completed in December 2010 and accepted as a doctoral thesis by the Department of Economics at the University of Munich. The study addresses the question whether the emergence of...

The escalating rate of obesity in the US highlights the importance of understanding the causes for this rise. In this paper I employ the First, Second, and Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys to estimate a structural model of the determinants of adult obesity. To control for...