Vaccines against several common foodborne pathogens are being developed and could substantially alter the policy tools available to address foodborne illness. However, little analysis is available to suggest how social welfare would be affected by these new vaccines. To address this void, we use...

Policymakers and school district officials hope to reduce childhood obesity by improving the nutrition of school lunches. The Healthy, Hungry-Free Kids Act of 2010 requires that the calorie content of lunches served as part of the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) must fall within ranges that...

Vaccines against several common foodborne pathogens are being developed and could substantially alter the policy tools available to address foodborne illness. However, little analysis is available to suggest how social welfare would be affected by these new vaccines. To address this void, we use...

An experiment was conducted to investigate the interaction between consumers’ past eating behaviors, risk perceptions and future information processing procedure. In the study, participants were required to choose whether or not to eat chicken that was potentially be tainted with Avian...

While there is mixed evidence of the impact of food assistance programs on obesity, there is general agreement that the food-insecure are at higher risk of obesity and obesity-related diseases. Food assistance programs, originally designed to overcome a lack of available food, now need to...

We use observational data from 22 elementary schools and over 48,000 child-day observations to examine the relationship between the number of fruit and vegetable items and the consumption patterns of children during school lunch. We find that each additional fruit or vegetable item that is...

Rational choice theory commonly assumes that the presence of unselected choices cannot impact which among the remaining choices is selected–-often referred to as “independence of irrelevant alternatives.†We show that such seemingly irrelevant alternatives influence choice in a...

Findings from behavioral and psychological studies indicate that people regularly and predictably behave in ways that contradict some standard assumptions of economic analysis. Recognizing that consumption choices are determined by factors other than prices, income, and information illuminates a...