Nutritional value is an important attribute of foods whose benefits can only be experienced by repetitive consumption in long run. Consumers’ knowledge about the importance and usefulness of specific nutrients in a food product may influence their subjective expectation of the product’s...

This paper presents a model of estimated demand for four tobacco products: cigarettes, cigars, chewing tobacco, and smoking tobacco products. Own elasticities and cross-price elasticities are used to obtain insights into the effectiveness and implications of new policy measures. Of particular...

This paper provides quantitative estimates of the effect of proximity to fast food restaurants and grocery stores on obesity in urban food markets. Our empirical model combined georeferenced micro data on access to fast food restaurants and grocery stores with data about salient personal...

Information about cigarettes can help smokers come to an informed decision about what cigarettes to purchase. Countermarketing information, which helps counter potentially biased marketing information, can fill this void, but little is known about the value of this information to smokers. In...

Data from NHANES are used to analyze the effect of the WIC program on the health of U.S. preschool children's health. A household health production model shows that WIC does improve the health of children, along with a higher poverty income ratio. Region of the country or county is also significant.

Access to public and private health insurance in rural areas of low income countries is severely constrained by high unit cost of transaction per contract due to information asymmetries between insurance sellers and buyers. This leads to a situation in which the majority of the poor have to rely...

Xi Chen acknowledges generous Doctoral Research Grant from the Institute for the Social Sciences at Cornell University and precious data set provided by the Development Strategy and Governance Division at IFPRI. Conference Travel Grant provided by the Department of Applied Economics and...

This paper evaluates farmers’ willingness to pay (WTP) for the vegetative propagated orange fleshed sweetpotato (OFSP) planting material that is many times considered as a public good. Famers’ WTP for OFSP vines was elicited by conducting a real choice experiment (RCE) among 121 small...

The rising obesity during the past three decades poses a severe public health challenge and spurred enormous research interests. This paper contributes to the growing literature on how obesity spreads by empirically investigating whether social norms affect soft drink consumption choices....

Neoclassical economic theory models individuals as making consistent choices over time and it assumes these choices are the outcome of rational utility maximization. Recent theoretical developments in the theory of consumer decision-making have drawn evidence from other disciplines such as,...