Dynamics of obesity in Finland

The purpose of this research is to study empirically the dynamics of obesity in Finland and provide empirical evidence of temporal causality between obesity, health expenditure, unemployment, urbanization, alcohol consumption and calorie intake. The paper employs bounds testing cointegration procedure and augmented causality tests. The empirical results suggest the existence of cointegration amongst the variables. Augmented Granger causality tests indicate the existence of a long-run causality as well as three different pairs of short-run causalities. The study draws some important policy recommendations.