On Food Companies Liability for Obesity

Bénédicte Coestier, Estelle Gozlan and Stéphan Marette ()

American Journal of Agricultural Economics, 2005, vol. 87, issue 1, 1-14

Abstract: The U.S. food industry faces tobacco-style lawsuits for providing misleading information about health risks linked to the consumption of fatty products. This article investigates the link between alternative liability rules and the incentive for disclosing health information to consumers. We show that if the expected damage is relatively low, the absence of intervention is socially optimal. If the expected damage is not too high, mandatory labeling is socially optimal. Liability rules are only welfare-enhancing for high levels of risk and/or when consumers misperceive health warnings. Copyright 2005, Oxford University Press.

Date: 2005
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/j.0002-9092.2005.00697.x (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: On Food Companies Liability for Obesity (2004)
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:oup:ajagec:v:87:y:2005:i:1:p:1-14

Access Statistics for this article

American Journal of Agricultural Economics is currently edited by Madhu Khanna, Brian E. Roe, James Vercammen and JunJie Wu

More articles in American Journal of Agricultural Economics from Agricultural and Applied Economics Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().