Obesity is still on the rise, leading to high costs for the obese individual itself but also for society. We analyze the influence of peer effects on food choices in lunchrooms with posted nutrition facts. Data were collected in a lunchroom at a large U.S. university. Groups of four patrons each...

A growing body of research supports the \economic insecurity" theory of obesity, which posits that uncertainty with respect to one's material well- being may be an important root cause of the modern obesity epidemic. This literature has been limited in the past by a lack of reliable measures of...

This study investigates whether peers are a contributing factor in the increase in childhood obesity rates, and whether peer effects vary by race, gender and residential neighborhood. We control for the commercial food environment around schools and residence when estimating peer effects given...

We examine the role of peer effects in childhood obesity outcomes by investigating whether obesity rates among the highest graders in a public school has an effect on obesity rates among younger grades. We use a panel dataset with obesity prevalence measured at the grade level. Our data are from...

How much has food abundance, attributable to U.S. public agricultural R&D, contributed to the high and rising U.S. obesity rates? In this paper we investigate the effects of public investment in agricultural R&D on food prices, per capita calorie consumption, adult body weight, obesity, public...

The obesity epidemic and excessive consumption of sugary beverages has led to proposals of economics-based interventions to promote healthy eating. We quantify the differential effects of taxing sugar-sweetened beverages by calories and by ounce on consumer demand, using a fully modified...

Food environment includes the presence of supermarkets, restaurants, warehouse clubs and supercenters, and other food outlets. This paper evaluates weight outcomes from a food environment using a stochastic production frontier and an equation for the determinants of efficiency, where the...

This study analyses whether Russian households differ in their choice of food quality when they differ in their number of overweight and obese members. Using survey data from the Russia Longitudinal Monitoring Survey (RLMS) for the years 1995-2005, households are classified into three weight...

This paper examines the health effects of a fiscal food policy based on a combination of fat taxes and thin subsidies. The fat tax is based on the saturated fat content of food items while the thin subsidy is applied to select fruit and vegetable items. The policy is designed to be revenue...