Citation
Cohen-Cole, Ethan; Fletcher, Jason; & M (2008). Is obesity contagious? Social networks vs. environmental factors in the obesity epidemic. Journal of Health Economics. vol. 27 (5) pp. 1382-1387Abstract
This note's aim is to investigate the sensitivity of Christakis and Fowler's claim [Christakis, N., Fowler, J., 2007. The spread of obesity in a large social network over 32 years. The New England Journal of Medicine 357, 370–379] that obesity has spread through social networks. It is well known in the economics literature that failure to include contextual effects can lead to spurious inference on “social network effects.” We replicate the NEJM results using their specification and a complementary dataset. We find that point estimates of the “social network effect” are reduced and become statistically indistinguishable from zero once standard econometric techniques are implemented. We further note the presence of estimation bias resulting from use of an incorrectly specified dynamic modelURL
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167629608000362Keyword(s)
ObesityReference Type
Journal ArticleJournal Title
Journal of Health EconomicsAuthor(s)
Cohen-Cole, EthanFletcher, Jason
M