IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fda/fdaddt/2008-21.html

The Rise in Obesity Across the Atlantic: An Economic Perspective

Author

Listed:
  • Giorgio Brunello
  • Pierre-Carl Michaud
  • Anna Sanz de Galdeano

Abstract

We provide comparable evidence on the patterns and trends in obesity across the Atlantic and analyse whether there are economic rationales for public intervention to control obesity. We take into account equity issues as well as efficiency considerations, which are organized around three categories of market failures: productive inefficiencies, lack of information or rationality and health insurance externalities. We also calculate the long term financial consequences of current US and European obesity trends, and conclude with a brief review of current policies to reduce and prevent excessive body weight both in Europe and the US.

Suggested Citation

  • Giorgio Brunello & Pierre-Carl Michaud & Anna Sanz de Galdeano, 2008. "The Rise in Obesity Across the Atlantic: An Economic Perspective," Working Papers 2008-21, FEDEA.
    • Handle: RePEc:fda:fdaddt:2008-21
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://documentos.fedea.net/pubs/dt/2008/dt-2008-21.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Brunello, Giorgio & Sanz-de-Galdeano, Anna & Terskaya, Anastasia, 2020. "Not only in my genes: The effects of peers’ genotype on obesity," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 72(C).
    2. Huerta, Maria C. & Borgonovi, Francesca, 2010. "Education, alcohol use and abuse among young adults in Britain," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 71(1), pages 143-151, July.
    3. Daniel S. Hamermesh, 2009. "Grazing, Goods and Girth: Determinants and Effects," NBER Working Papers 15277, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Eduardo Rodríguez Oreggia & Ana Bertha Pérez Lizaur, 2010. "Factores de dinámica social asociados al índice de masa corporal en adultos en México," Estudios Económicos, El Colegio de México, Centro de Estudios Económicos, vol. 25(2), pages 337-362.
    5. Ghosh, sudeshna, 2017. "Globalization and Obesity: Asian Experiences of ‘Globesity’," MPRA Paper 94601, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    6. David G. Blanchflower & Andrew J. Oswald & Bert Van Landeghem, 2009. "Imitative Obesity and Relative Utility," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 7(2-3), pages 528-538, 04-05.
    7. Ferda Halicioglu, 2013. "Dynamics of obesity in Finland," Journal of Economic Studies, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 40(5), pages 644-657, October.
    8. Costa-Font, Joan & Fabbri, Daniele & Gil, Joan, 2009. "Decomposing body mass index gaps between Mediterranean countries: A counterfactual quantile regression analysis," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 7(3), pages 351-365, December.
    9. Lundborg, Petter & Nystedt, Paul & Rooth, Dan-Olof, 2010. "No Country for Fat Men? Obesity, Earnings, Skills, and Health among 450,000 Swedish Men," IZA Discussion Papers 4775, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    10. Adriana BARONE & Annamaria NESE, 2014. "Body Weight and Academic Performance: Gender and Peer Effects," CELPE Discussion Papers 129, CELPE - CEnter for Labor and Political Economics, University of Salerno, Italy.
    11. Barone, Adriana & Nese, Annamaria, 2015. "Body Weight and Gender: Academic Choice and Performance," MPRA Paper 68450, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    12. Anna Sanz-de-Galdeano & Anastasia Terskaya & Angie Upegui, 2020. "Association of a genetic risk score with BMI along the life-cycle: Evidence from several US cohorts," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(9), pages 1-19, September.
    13. Tomer, John F., 2013. "Stemming the tide of obesity: What needs to happen," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 88-98.
    14. Todeschini, F. & Labeaga, J. & Jiménez-Martín, S., 2010. "Death by lung cancer or by diabetes? The unintended consequences of quitting smoking," Health, Econometrics and Data Group (HEDG) Working Papers 10/16, HEDG, c/o Department of Economics, University of York.
    15. Sanz-de-Galdeano, Anna & Terskaya, Anastasia & Upegui, Angie, 2020. "Association of a Genetic Risk Score with BMI along the Life-Cycle: Evidence from Several US Cohorts," IZA Discussion Papers 13671, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • I1 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health
    • D6 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:fda:fdaddt:2008-21. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Marta Fernández (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.fedea.net .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.