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...

This study investigates whether peers are a contributing factor in childhood body-weight outcomes. Using an instrumental variables method on exogenously assigned peers, we find that the weight of peers within the same grade and school significantly impacts body mass index (BMI) z-score of an...

Respondents in choice experiments (CEs) may ignore some of the attributes presented to them when evaluation alternatives in a choice task, which has been referred to as attribute non-attendance (ANA). Previous studies have shown that ANA may impact both the model fit as the WTP estimates for the...

Over the past decade public perception of GM food in China has become increasingly contentious. Concerns have emerged with regard to public health, environmental safety, and economic impacts. This paper utilizes a survey conducted in 2013 to evaluate China’s urban consumers’ acceptance and...

A framework for estimating cost effectiveness of the youth Expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program (EFNEP), one of the largest nutrition education programs in the US, is developed. Using costs and effects data from 15 program counties in Virginia for the school year 2011/2012, the cost...

The School Breakfast Program (SBP) and National School Lunch Program (NSLP) are two federally assisted school meal programs that currently serve over 31.7 million children each day. Most of the existing literature examines the nutritional quality of school meals with a handful studying the...