The Effect of Deceptive Advertising on Consumption of the Advertised Good and its Substitutes: The Case of Over-the-Counter Weight Loss Products

This research was supported by an unrestricted educational grant to Cornell University from the Merck Company Foundation, the philanthropic arm of Merck & Co. We also thank Cornell's Institute for Health Economics, Health Behaviors, and Disparities for financial support. We thank Donald Kenkel, Dean Lillard, and Alan Mathios for their generosity in sharing the PhADS database. For helpful comments, we thank Sahara Byrne, Dhaval Dave, Phil DeCicca, Michael Grossman, Don Kenkel, Annabelle Krause, Jeff Niederdeppe, Edward Norton, Jeff Smith, and conference participants at the American Economic Association meetings, IZA Conference on the Economics of Risky Behaviors, and the Conference on the Economics of Obesity at the Paris School of Economics, and seminar participants at Yale, Cornell, University of Melbourne, University of Michigan, University of Minnesota, University of Pennsylvania, University of Sydney, University of York, McMaster, Case Western, Kenyon College, City University of New York Graduate Center, and the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. Corresponding author: John Cawley. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.