Seminar: Economic preferences and obesity
Evidence from a clinical lab-in-field experiment
The Centre for Health Economics at Monash Business School invites you to the research webinar ‘Economic preferences and obesity: Evidence from a clinical lab-in-field experiment,’ presented by Professor Agnieszka Tymula from the University of Sydney.
We study economic decision-making of 296 obese and unhealthy participants of a year-long weight-loss program run in a major teaching hospital. To elicit preferences, we use incentive-compatible experimental tasks that participants completed during their medical screen-in examination. Our most surprising finding is that our unhealthy sample does not exhibit present-bias, and those who are more present biased are not more obese. But we find that risk tolerance, especially when combined with high levels of patience, is significantly associated with lower BMI and risk of morbid obesity for women. We replicate the key finding of interaction effects between risk and time preferences using survey data from a nationally representative sample of 6,281 Australians with obesity. Deviating markedly from the literature, we conclude that risk tolerance brings benefits for health outcomes if combined with patience in this understudied but highly policy-relevant population.
Presenter
Professor Agnieszka Tymula's research combines theory and methodology from economics, psychology, and neuroscience for a better understanding of how people decide, why they sometimes make seemingly wrong decisions, and how to make them better choosers. She is a Professor of Economics at the University of Sydney and the Chief Investigator on the ARC Lifecourse Centre of Excellence.
CHE seminar series
At the Centre for Health Economics, we are working on running as many of our seminars as possible online while COVID-19 remains an obstacle to getting together. As we will be working with experts and colleagues in other parts of the world there will be some movement in the times and days that seminars run to take into account different time zones and availabilities. If you would like to be on our seminar email list, please be directly in contact by email to shannon.stanwell@monash.edu.
Hope to see you there!
Event Details
- Date:
- 23 September 2020 at 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm
- Venue:
- This seminar will take place via Zoom - please email shannon.stanwell@monash.edu to register
- Categories:
- Health Economics
Description
Evidence from a clinical lab-in-field experiment
The Centre for Health Economics at Monash Business School invites you to the research webinar ‘Economic preferences and obesity: Evidence from a clinical lab-in-field experiment,’ presented by Professor Agnieszka Tymula from the University of Sydney.
We study economic decision-making of 296 obese and unhealthy participants of a year-long weight-loss program run in a major teaching hospital. To elicit preferences, we use incentive-compatible experimental tasks that participants completed during their medical screen-in examination. Our most surprising finding is that our unhealthy sample does not exhibit present-bias, and those who are more present biased are not more obese. But we find that risk tolerance, especially when combined with high levels of patience, is significantly associated with lower BMI and risk of morbid obesity for women. We replicate the key finding of interaction effects between risk and time preferences using survey data from a nationally representative sample of 6,281 Australians with obesity. Deviating markedly from the literature, we conclude that risk tolerance brings benefits for health outcomes if combined with patience in this understudied but highly policy-relevant population.
Presenter
Professor Agnieszka Tymula's research combines theory and methodology from economics, psychology, and neuroscience for a better understanding of how people decide, why they sometimes make seemingly wrong decisions, and how to make them better choosers. She is a Professor of Economics at the University of Sydney and the Chief Investigator on the ARC Lifecourse Centre of Excellence.
CHE seminar series
At the Centre for Health Economics, we are working on running as many of our seminars as possible online while COVID-19 remains an obstacle to getting together. As we will be working with experts and colleagues in other parts of the world there will be some movement in the times and days that seminars run to take into account different time zones and availabilities. If you would like to be on our seminar email list, please be directly in contact by email to shannon.stanwell@monash.edu.
Hope to see you there!