Betting on weight loss ... and losing: Personal gambles as commitment mechanisms

Applied Economics Letters

Volumn 17, Issue 12, 2010, Pages 1161-1166

  Burger, Nicholas ^a   Lynham, John ^b  

^a RAND CORPORATION   (United States)

^b UNIVERSITY OF HAWAII   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

BODY MASS; CORRESPONDENCE ANALYSIS; EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS; OBESITY;

EID: 77954837405     PISSN: 13504851     EISSN: 14664291     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/00036840902845442     Document Type: Article

References (23)

1. Akerlof, G. A. (1991) Procrastination and obedience, American Economic Review, 81, 1-19.
2. Ariely, D. and Wertenbroch, K. (2002) Procrastination, deadlines, and performance: self-control by precommitment, Psychological Science, 13, 219-24.
3. Ayyad, C. and Andersen, T. (2000) Long-term efficacy of dietary treatment of obesity: a systematic review of studies published between 1931 and 1999, Obesity Reviews, 1, 113-99.
4. Benabou, R. and Tirole, J. (2004) Willpower and personal rules, Journal of Political Economy, 112, 848-86.
5. Bhattacharya, J. and Sood, N. (2006) Health insurance and the obesity externality, Advances in Health Economics and Health Services Research, 17, 281-321.
6. Charness, G. and Gneezy, U. (2009) Incentives to exercise, Econometrica, forthcoming.
7. Dallery, J. and Glenn, I. (2005) Effects of an internet-based voucher reinforcement program for smoking abstinence: a feasibility study, Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 38, 349-57.
8. Dallery, J. and Lancaster, J. S. (1999) Individual differences in behavioral tolerance to amphetamine and the economic context of reinforcement loss, Behavioural Pharmacology, 10, 257-69.
9. Dallery, J., Silverman, K., Chutuape, M., Bigelow, G. E. and Stitzer, M. E. (2001) Voucher-based reinforcement of dual drug abstinence in treatment-resistant methadone patients: effects of reinforcer magnitude, Journal of Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology, 9, 317-25.
10. Eisenhauer, J. G. and Ventura, L. (2006) The prevalence of hyperbolic discounting: some European evidence, Applied Economics, 38, 1223-34.
11. Finkelstein, E. A., Fiebelkorn, I. C. and Wang, G. (2003) National medical spending attributable to overweight and obesity: how much, and who's paying, Health Affairs, 3, 219-26.
12. Fudenberg, D. and Levine, D. K. (2006) A dual-self model of impulse control, The American Economic Review, 96,1449-76.
13. Laibson, D. (1997) Golden eggs and hyperbolic discounting, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 112, 443-77.
14. McArdle, W. D., Katch, F. I. and Katch, V. L. (2006) Exercise Physiology: Energy, Nutrition, and Human Performance, Lippincott Williams and Wilkins, Philadelphia, PA.
15. O'Donoghue, T. and Rabin, M. (1999) Doing it now or later, American Economic Review, 89, 103-24.
16. O'Donoghue, T. and Rabin, M. (2005) Incentives and self-control, mimeo, University of California, Berkeley.
17. Phelps, E. S. and Pollak, R. A. (1968) On second-best national saving and game-equilibrium growth, Review of Economic Studies, 35, 185-99.
18. Shimokawa, S. (2008) The labour market impact of body weight in China: a semiparametric analysis, Applied Economics, 40, 949-68.
19. Silverman, K., Chutuape, M. A., Bigelow, G. E. and Stitzer, M. L. (1999) Voucher-based reinforcement of cocaine abstinence in treatment-resistant methadone patients: effects of reinforcement magnitude, Psychopharmacology, 146, 128-38.
20. Strotz, R. H. (1956) Myopia and inconsistency in dynamic utility maximization, Review of Economic Studies, 23, 165-80.
21. Volpp, K. G., John, L. K., Troxel, A. B., Norton, L., Fassbender, J. and Loewenstein, G. (2008) Financial incentive-based approaches for weight loss: a randomized trial, JAMA, 300, 2631.
22. Whaley, M. H., Brubaker, P. H., Otto, R. M. and Armstrong, L. E. (2006) ACSM's Guidelines for Exercise Testing and Prescription, Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, Philadelphia, PA.
23. Wing, R. R. and Jeffrey, R. W. (2001) Food provision as a strategy to promote weight loss, Obesity Research, 9, S271-5.