Labour Market, Obesity and Public Policy Considerations

Konstantinos Eleftheriou () and George Athanasiou ()

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: This paper attempts to investigate the relation among wages, unemployment and obesity and to identify public policies to address the problem of over-weightness. To this purpose, a simple search and matching model of labour market is developed. Our framework tries to capture the relationship between obesity and employment/unemployment by assuming that the fraction of obese workers is a function of the ratio of vacant jobs to unemployment (labour market tightness). We argue that if obesity is positively related with employment, then social optimality dictates the imposition of a lump-sum tax on all individuals. In the opposite case a subsidy should be given.

Keywords: Obesity; Taxation; Unemployment; Wages (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I18 J64 I10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dge, nep-hea and nep-lab
Date: 2010-02-23
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Related works:
Journal Article: Labour market, obesity and public policy considerations (2013)
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Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:20926

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