Framing Obesity in Economic Theory and Policy

Stefan Mann ()

No 25619, 2006 Annual Meeting, August 12-18, 2006, Queensland, Australia from International Association of Agricultural Economists

Abstract: While obesity is a growing problem that entails considerable costs, its causes for individuals are not yet well understood in economic terms. Three explanatory approaches are explored: obesity as a rational decision pursued by the individual, obesity as a problem of too little information and obesity as the result of a weak will. While the recent rise in obesity can be explained rationally by a changed environment, information deficiencies and akrasia contribute to explaining its frequency. If the state intervenes, a fat tax carries much higher allocative losses than taxing overweight directly.

Keywords: Health; Economics; and; Policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 17
Date: 2006
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/25619/files/cp060063.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
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:ags:iaae06:25619

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.25619

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in 2006 Annual Meeting, August 12-18, 2006, Queensland, Australia from International Association of Agricultural Economists Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().