This article quantifies the effect of the 2006 food-borne illness spinach outbreak on harvested acreage for the fresh spinach market. In September 2006, fresh spinach contaminated with E. coli O157:H7 caused hundreds of consumer illnesses across the U.S. and a few deaths. The outbreak was...

Previous studies have found underestimation of risk, or overconfidence, to be pervasive. In this paper, we model overconfidence as a reduction in perceived variance. We generalize the analysis of Sandmo and examine the effects of competition on firms displaying overconfidence. Cases for both...