IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/uow/depec1/wp00-07.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Rational Non-addictive Eating: Cycles, Overweightness, and Underweightness

Author

Abstract

Although a deviation from the physiologically optimal weight increases the probability of dying, the steady state for a lifetime expected-utility maximiser is a state of overweightness. However, even a small initial deviation from this rationally stationary weight is followed by explosive oscillations. These oscillations might lead to severe and chronic underweightness in a late stage of life. In the presence of socio-cultural norms of appearance, the rationally stationary weight of fat people is lower than otherwise and the rationally stationary weight of lean people is greater than otherwise.

Suggested Citation

  • Levy, A., 2000. "Rational Non-addictive Eating: Cycles, Overweightness, and Underweightness," Economics Working Papers wp00-07, School of Economics, University of Wollongong, NSW, Australia.
    • Handle: RePEc:uow:depec1:wp00-07
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.uow.edu.au/content/groups/public/@web/@commerce/@econ/documents/doc/uow012099.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Rational eating; cycles;

    JEL classification:

    • I12 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health Behavior

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:uow:depec1:wp00-07. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Peter Siminski (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/deuowau.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.