This paper calls into question the currently most influential model of international trade. An empirical finding by Trefler (2004, AER) and others that industrial productivity increases more strongly in liberalized industries than in non-liberalized industries has been widely accepted as...

When traditional measures for health and economic welfare are scarce or unreliable, height and the body mass index (BMI) are now well-accepted measures that reflect net nutrition during economic development. To date, there is no study that compares 19th century BMIs of immigrants and US natives....

This paper uses longitudinal micro-evidence from the European Community Household Panel to investigate the obesity phenomenon in nine EU countries from 1998 to 2001. The author documents cross-country prevalence, trends and cohort-age profiles of obesity among adults and analyses the...

The rather small literature on obesity in developing countries mainly uses descriptive statistics and cross section analysis to focus on rising income levels as the source of rapidly increasing obesity rates. This paper uses a new panel dataset comprised of WHO and World Bank data for 126 low-...

Childhood obesity in developing countries is a topic that hasn’t found its way in the economic literature yet. Despite the fact that obesity rates are rising worldwide and the phenomenon is very present even among the poorest of households in developing countries, most of the attention is...

While childhood obesity has become a significant public health concern over the last few decades, knowledge concerning the origins of or persistence in childhood anthropometric measures is incomplete. Here, we utilize several nonparametric measures of mobility to assess the evolution of weight,...

The beginning rise in obesity prevalence rates in South Africa was first noticed already in the early 1990s. Since then, several articles have discussed how the nutrition transition has affected people’s body weights in the country. This article is the first one that uses longitudinal data...

Child care subsidies play a critical role in facilitating the transition of disadvantaged mothers from welfare to work. However, little is known about the influence of these policies on children's health and well-being. In this paper, we study the impact of subsidy receipt on low-income...

This paper contributes to explaining the obesity epidemic and finding a potential remedy. We build a theoretical model of food consumption decisions that accounts for social influence. In our model, individuals' rationality is affected by an endogenous social weight norm, which influences their...

This paper examines the influence of social norms on obesity. We develop a concept of social norm related to social distortion in weight perception developed through shared experiences in a common social environment with a high prevalence of obesity. The theoretical model show that when obesity...