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

Ethan Cohen-Cole () and Jason Fletcher

Journal of Health Economics, 2008, vol. 27, issue 5, 1382-1387

Abstract: This note's aim is to investigate the sensitivity of Christakis and Fowler's claim [Christakis, N., Fowler, J., 2007. The spread of obesity in a large social network over 32 years. The New England Journal of Medicine 357, 370-379] 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.

Date: 2008
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (134)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167-6296(08)00036-2
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Working Paper: 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:eee:jhecon:v:27:y:2008:i:5:p:1382-1387

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Health Economics is currently edited by J. P. Newhouse, A. J. Culyer, R. Frank, K. Claxton and T. McGuire

More articles in Journal of Health Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().