Is obesity contagious?: social networks vs. environmental factors in the obesity epidemic

Ethan Cohen-Cole () and Jason Fletcher

No QAU08-2, Supervisory Research and Analysis Working Papers from Federal Reserve Bank of Boston

Abstract: This note?s aim is to investigate the sensitivity of Christakis and Fowler?s claim (NEJM July 26, 2007) that obesity has spread through social networks. It is well known in the economics literature that failure to include contextual effects can lead to spurious inference on ?social network effects.? We replicate the NEJM results using their specification and a complementary dataset. We find that point estimates of the ?social network effect? are reduced and become statistically indistinguishable from zero once standard econometric techniques are implemented. We further note the presence of estimation bias resulting from use of an incorrectly specified dynamic model.

Keywords: Obesity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea, nep-soc and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (126)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.bostonfed.org/bankinfo/qau/wp/2008/qau0802.htm (text/html)
http://www.bostonfed.org/bankinfo/qau/wp/2008/qau0802.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Is obesity contagious? Social networks vs. environmental factors in the obesity epidemic (2008)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fip:fedbqu:qau08-2

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Supervisory Research and Analysis Working Papers from Federal Reserve Bank of Boston Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Spozio ().