Economic Impact of Risky Health Behaviors Analyzed

Scranton native John Cawley, Ph.D., professor in the Department of Economics and the Department of Policy Analysis and Management at Cornell University, will present “The Economics of Obesity” at The University of Scranton’s 29^th Henry George Seminar on Monday, April 8, at 4 p.m. in the McIlhenny Ballroom of the DeNaples Center. His research interests include the economics of risky health behaviors; in particular, those that relate to obesity. Examples of research projects include: the effects of food advertising on diet and of income on weight; the impact of obesity on labor market outcomes such as wages; the effect of physical education on youths; and the effectiveness of financial rewards for weight loss.

Dr. Cawley’s research has been published  in the American Economic Review, Review of Economics and Statistics, Journal of Economic Perspectives, as well as journals in health economics (e.g. Journal of Health Economics, Health Economics and the American Journal of Health Economics), public policy (Journal of Policy Analysis and Management and Health Affairs) and medicine and public health (e.g. The Journal of the American Medical Association, Lancet and the American Journal of Public Health).

His research has also been widely covered in the media, including stories in the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, The New York Times, The Economist, Business Week, Forbes, Scientific American and The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Dr. Cawley is co-director of Cornell’s Institute on Health Economics, Health Behaviors and Disparities. He is also a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), a research fellow at the Tinbergen Institute in the Netherlands, and a research fellow of the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Germany.

In addition to his affiliation with Cornell, Dr. Cawley is the Erasmus Initiative Visiting Professor of Health Economics at Erasmus University Rotterdam in the Netherlands and an Honorary Professor of Economics at the National University of Ireland, Galway. He is also a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), a research fellow at the Tinbergen Institute in the Netherlands, and a research fellow of the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Germany. He was a member of the Institute of Medicine Committee “Prevention of Obesity in Children and Youth” and has served on advisory boards and expert panels for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other government agencies. Dr. Cawley is as an editor of the Journal of Health Economics.

Dr. Cawley has received numerous awards during his career, including the Investigator Award in Health Policy Research from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the State University of New York (SUNY) Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Scholarship, the John D. Thompson Prize for Young Investigators from the Association of University Programs in Health Administration and the Charles C. Shepard Science Award in Prevention and Control from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. During 2016 he served as a Fulbright specialist in economics to Ireland.

Prior to arriving at Cornell, he was a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Scholar in Health Policy Research at the University of Michigan from 1999-2001. He earned his undergraduate degree in economics from Harvard University and his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Chicago.

For more information about the Henry George Seminar, call 570-941-4048 or email janice.mecadon@scranton.edu. The seminar is free of charge and open to the public.