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John Cawley
Research Associate
Cornell University
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Eligibility criteria for interventions can induce an Ashenfelter Dip, and subsequent mean-reversion may result in improvement over time even absent the intervention. We investigate these dynamics for a food-as-medicine program to treat diabetes, where eligibility required elevated hemoglobin A1c...
Author(s) - John Cawley, Julia Eddelbuettel, Scott Cunningham, Matthew D. Eisenberg, Alan D. Mathios & Rosemary J. Avery
Economics has long studied how consumers respond to the disclosure of information about firms. We study a case in which the disclosed information is unrelated to the product or firm leadership, but which could still potentially affect consumer patronage through the mechanism of repugnance, as...
Some harm reduction strategies encourage individuals to switch from a harmful addictive good to a less harmful addictive good; examples include e-cigarettes (substitutes for combustible cigarettes) and methadone and buprenorphine (substitutes for opioids). These have proven to be controversial....
Author(s) - Rosemary Avery, John Cawley, Julia Eddelbuettel, Matthew D. Eisenberg, Charlie Mann & Alan D. Mathios
This paper estimates the impact on consumer behavior of a firms voluntary disclosure of information. Specifically, we study the impact of Starbucks disclosure of calorie information on its menu boards in June 2013. Using data on over 250,000 consumers visits to specific restaurant chains, we...
Taxes on sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) are relatively new and there is little evidence about their impact on SSB consumption or body mass index (as opposed to prices, purchases, or sales), their impact on youth (as opposed to on adults), or their impact in non-Western nations. This paper adds to...
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August 1, 2020 - Article
Providing consumers with calorie information improves the accuracy of post-meal estimates of calorie counts by about 4 percent, or 65 calories. Listing calorie counts on restaurant menus reduces the likelihood that diners will underestimate the number of calories in their orders, according to John...
The educational attainment of siblings is highly correlated. We test for a specific type of peer effect between siblings in educational attainment: genetic nurture. Specifically, we test whether a persons educational attainment is correlated with their siblings polygenic score (PGS) for educational...
The United States, in 2018, implemented a nationwide requirement that chain restaurants disclose calorie information on their menus and menu boards. This law was motivated by concern that consumers underestimate the number of calories in restaurant food, but it remains unclear the extent to which...
Since 2017, many U.S. cities have implemented taxes on sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) to decrease consumption of sugary beverages and raise revenue. In this paper, we analyze household receipt data to examine the impact of SSB taxes on households purchases of taxed and untaxed beverages in the...
Several cities in the U.S. have implemented taxes on sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) in an attempt to improve public health and raise revenue. On July 1, 2017, Oakland California introduced a tax of one cent per ounce on SSBs. In this paper, we estimate the impact of the tax on retail prices,...
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November 26, 2018 - Article
After a new beverage tax was levied in January 2017, Philadelphia stores shifted their inventories away from sweetened beverages and toward alternative drinks. In 2017, Philadelphia became the first large U.S. city to impose an excise tax on sweetened beverages. The goals were to promote consumers'...
We estimate the incidence of a relatively new type of excise tax, a tax on sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs). We examine the largest such tax to date, which is two cents per ounce, in Boulder, CO. Using data that were hand-collected from stores and restaurants in both Boulder and two control...
In recent years, numerous U.S. cities have enacted taxes on sweetened beverages, but there is relatively little evidence about the effects of these taxes on purchases and consumption. In this paper, we examine the effects of the beverage tax of 1.5 cents per ounce that was implemented in...
In recent years, numerous cities in the U.S. have enacted taxes on beverages to promote health and raise revenue. This paper examines the impact of Philadelphias beverage tax, enacted in 2017, on the prices and availability of taxed beverages and untaxed beverages that may be substitutes for...
The impact of information on consumer behavior is a classic topic in economics, and there has recently been particular interest in whether providing nutritional information leads consumers to choose healthier diets. For example, a nationwide requirement of calorie counts on the menus of chain...
This paper is the first to use the method of instrumental variables to estimate the causal impact of youth obesity on U.S. medical care costs. We examine data from the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey for 2001-2013 and instrument for child BMI using the BMI of the childs biological mother. IV...
Estimating peer effects is notoriously difficult because of the reflection problem and the endogeneity of peer group formation. This paper tests for peer effects in obesity in a novel way that addresses these challenges. It addresses the reflection problem by using the alters genetic risk score for...
A substantial literature has examined the impact of stress during early childhood on later-life health. This paper contributes to that literature by examining the later-life health impact of stress during adolescence and early adulthood, using a novel proxy for stress: risk of military induction...
The U.S. population receives suboptimal levels of preventive care and has a high prevalence of risky health behaviors. One goal of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was to increase preventive care and improve health behaviors by expanding access to health insurance. This paper estimates how the ACA...
Author(s) - Petri Böckerman, John Cawley, Jutta Viinikainen, Terho Lehtimäki, Suvi Rovio, Ilkka Seppälä, Jaakko Pehkonen & Olli Raitakari
The increase in the prevalence of obesity worldwide has led to great interest in the economic consequences of obesity, but valid and powerful instruments for obesity, which are needed to estimate its causal effects, are rare. This paper contributes to the literature by using a novel instrument:...
Obesity and diet-related chronic disease are increasing problems worldwide. In response, many governments have enacted or are considering taxes on energy-dense foods. Perhaps the most commonly-recommended policy is a tax on sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs). This paper estimates the extent to which a...
One of the most robust findings in health economics is that higher-educated individuals tend to be in better health. This paper tests whether health disparities across education are to some extent due to differences in reporting error across education. We test this hypothesis using data from the...
December 18, 2013 - Article
Author(s) - John Cawley
During the past three decades in the United States, many indicators of population health such as life expectancy, the prevalence of smoking, and drug and alcohol use among youths improved significantly. 1 In stark contrast to these trends, over same period the United States also experienced a...
This paper is the first to estimate the impact of exposure to deceptive advertising on consumption of the advertised product and its substitutes. We study the market for over-the-counter (OTC) weight-loss products, a market in which deceptive advertising is rampant and products are generally...
We provide new evidence on the extent to which the demand for cigarettes is derived from the demand for weight control (i.e. weight loss or avoidance of weight gain). We utilize nationally representative data that provide the most direct evidence to date on this question: individuals are directly...
In response to the dramatic rise in childhood obesity, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and other organizations have advocated increasing the time that elementary school children spend in physical education (PE) classes. However, little is known about the effect of PE on child weight. This...
This paper investigates the impact of the macroeconomy on the health insurance coverage of Americans using panel data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) for 2004-2010, a period that includes the Great Recession of 2007-09. We find that a one percentage point increase in the...
Risky health behaviors such as smoking, drinking alcohol, drug use, unprotected sex, and poor diets and sedentary lifestyles (leading to obesity) are a major source of preventable deaths. This chapter overviews the theoretical frameworks for, and empirical evidence on, the economics of risky health...
April 13, 2011 - Chapter
This paper is the first to use the method of instrumental variables (IV) to estimate the impact of obesity on medical costs in order to address the endogeneity of weight and to reduce the bias from reporting error in weight. Models are estimated using data from the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey...
Excess body weight or body fat hinders performance of military duties. As a result, the U.S. military has weight-for-height and percent body fat standards for enlistment. This paper estimates the number and percent of military-age civilians who meet, and do not meet, the current active duty...
October 20, 2009 - Article
The prevalence of youth overweight has risen dramatically over the past three decades in the U.S. and now represents an epidemic. Since 1970, the fraction of children that are overweight has nearly quadrupled among 6 to 11 year olds and more than doubled among 12 to 19 year olds. Currently, one in...
There are several ways to measure fatness and obesity, each with its own strengths and weaknesses. The primary measure for tracking the prevalence of obesity has historically been body mass index (BMI). This paper compares long-run trends in the prevalence of obesity when obesity is defined using...
Obesity rates in the U.S. have doubled since 1980. Given the medical, social, and financial costs of obesity, a large percentage of Americans are attempting to lose weight at any given time but the vast majority of weight loss attempts fail. Researchers continue to search for safe and effective...
This paper tests whether income affects the body weight and clinical weight classification of elderly Americans using a natural experiment that led otherwise identical retirees to receive significantly different Social Security payments based on their year of birth. We exploit this natural...
This paper investigates the association between obesity and skill attainment in early childhood (aged 2-4 years). Data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study are used to estimate models of developmental functioning in four critical areas (verbal skills, activities of daily living, motor skills,...
Recent research has found that maternal employment is associated with worse child performance on tests of cognitive ability. This paper explores mechanisms for that correlation. We estimate models of instrumental variables using a unique dataset, the American Time Use Survey, that measure the effect...
Recent research has found that maternal employment is associated with an increased risk of childhood obesity. This paper explores mechanisms for that correlation. We estimate models of instrumental variables using a unique dataset, the American Time Use Survey, that measure the effect of maternal...
Author(s) - John Cawley
Several recent surveys have asked Americans whether they support policies to reduce childhood obesity. There is reason for skepticism of such surveys because people are not confronted with the tax costs of such policies when they are asked whether they support them. This paper uses contingent...
Virtually all social science research related to obesity uses body mass index (BMI), usually calculated using self-reported values of weight and height, or clinical weight classifications based on BMI. Yet there is wide agreement in the medical literature that such measures are seriously flawed...
The Nutrition Labeling and Education Act (NLEA) imposed significant changes in the information about calories and nutrients that manufacturers of packaged foods must provide to consumers. This paper tests whether the release of this information impacted body weight and obesity among American adults....
To combat childhood overweight, which has risen dramatically in the past three decades, many medical and public health organizations have called for students to spend more time in physical education (PE) classes. This paper is the first to exploit state PE requirements as quasi-natural experiments...
June 1, 2005 - Chapter
In September 1997, the anti-obesity drugs Pondimin and Redux, ingredients in the popular drug combination fen-phen, were withdrawn from the market for causing potentially fatal side effects. That event provides an opportunity for studying how consumers respond to drug withdrawals. In theory,...
This paper utilizes a rich longitudinal data set -- the Women's Employment Study (WES) to investigate whether obesity, which is common among women of low socioeconomic status, is a barrier to employment and earnings for current and former welfare recipients. We find evidence that, among current and...
This paper studies factor substitution in one important sector: the nursing home industry. Specifically, we measure the extent to which nursing homes substitute materials for labor when labor becomes relatively more expensive. From a policy perspective, factor substitution in this market is...
The primary objective of this paper is to improve our understanding of the historic relationship between state and national macroeconomic climate and the health insurance coverage of Americans. The secondary objective of this paper is to use the historic findings to estimate how the number of...
This paper examines the influence of body weight, body image, and cigarette prices in determining adolescent smoking initiation. Adolescents who desire to lose weight may initiate smoking as a method of appetite control. Such behavior may undermine the goals of tobacco control policies that seek to...
January 1, 2003 - Chapter
In March 2001, the longest economic expansion in US history ended, and an economic recession began. This paper seeks to provide a better understanding of the historical relationship between macroeconomic variables and health insurance coverage. We use data from two nationally representative samples:...
January 1, 2002 - Chapter
In recent years, many health maintenance organizations (HMOs) have exited the market for Medicare managed care; since 1998, the number of participating plans has fallen from 346 to 174. As a result of this reduced participation by HMOs, hundreds of thousands of Medicare beneficiaries have been...
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