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This paper examines the factors that may be responsible for the 50% increase in the number of obese adults in the US since the late 1970s. We employ the 1984-1999 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, augmented with state level measures pertaining to the per capita number of fast-food and full-service restaurants, the prices of a meal in each type of restaurant, food consumed at home, cigarettes, and alcohol, and clean indoor air laws. Our main results are that these variables have the expected effects on obesity and explain a substantial amount of its trend., (Copyright 2004 Elsevier B.V.)

Abstract: We address Gruber and Frakes''s criticisms that (1) the state excise tax on a package of cigarettes is a more exogenous measure of the cost of cigarettes than the state-specific price of a package of cigarettes and (2) that it is preferable to control for the effects of unmeasured variables that vary over time with the use of time dummies instead of with a quadratic time trend. We also point out that our specification of the cost effect differs from theirs because we allow it to be nonlinear while they force it to be linear. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]