Aim: To evaluate the eating behaviour in normal-weight, overweight, and obese women seeking participation in a diet-based programme of weight reduction or achievement of ideal body weight. Methods: Thirty-seven obese, 42 overweight, and 14 normal-weight subjects, seen at an Italian university outpatient clinic, were asked to complete the Stunkard and Messick three-factor eating questionnaire (TFEQ). The TFEQ is designed to evaluate three different factors in eating behaviour: restraint, disinhibition, and hunger. Forty-eight mothers of children attending public primary schools (25 normal weight and 23 overweight) served as controls. Results: Significantly altered scores of cognitive restraint were observed both in normal-weight and in overweight subjects of the outpatient clinic as compared with normal-weight and overweight control women. Outpatient clinic overweight women scored significantly higher in terms of disinhibition as compared with overweight control subjects. Among outpatient clinic subjects, overweight women showed higher scores of disinhibition but similar values of cognitive restraint as compared with outpatient clinic normal-weight subjects. In obese patients, the scores of disinhibition and hunger were higher than those observed in outpatient clinic normal-weight subjects, whereas values of cognitive restraint were significantly lower. As compared with outpatient clinic overweight women, obese subjects showed significantly lower values of cognitive restraint. Conclusions: Alterations in TFEQ results are a frequent feature in subjects seeking participation in programmes of weight reduction or ideal body weight achievement. This may reflect a possible impairment in eating behaviour.

Why is negative advertising such a prominent feature of competition in the US political market? We hypothesize that two-candidate races provide stronger incentives for going negative relative to non-duopoly contests: when the number of competitors is greater than two, airing negative ads creates positive externalities for opponents that are not the object of the attack. To investigate the empirical relevance of the fewness of competitors in explaining the volume of negative advertising, we exploit variation in the number of entrants running for US non-presidential primaries from 2000 through 2008. Duopolies are over twice as likely to air a negative ad when compared to non-duopolies, and the tendency for negative advertising decreases in the number of competitors. The estimates are robust to various specification checks and the inclusion of potential confounding factors at the race, candidate, and advertisement levels. * We thank

Eating disorders are an important and growing health concern, and bulimia nervosa (BN) accounts for the largest fraction of eating disorders. Health consequences of BN are substantial and especially serious given the increasingly compulsive nature of the disorder. However, remarkably little is known about the mechanisms underlying the persistent nature of BN. Using a unique panel data set on young women and instrumental variable techniques, we document that unobserved heterogeneity plays a role in the persistence of BN, but strikingly up to two thirds is due to true state dependence. Our results, together with support from the medical literature, provide evidence that bulimia should be considered an addiction. Our …ndings have important implications for public policy since they suggest that the timing of the policy is crucial: preventive educational programs should be coupled with more intense (rehabilitation) treatment at the early stages of bingeing and purging behaviors. Our results are robust to di¤erent model speci…cations and identifying assumptions.

We investigate whether the development of eating disorders, in the form of purging, is influenced by peers' body size through interpersonal comparisons. Using detailed information on recent cohorts of U.S. teenagers, we document a sizeable and significant negative effect of high school peers' body mass index (BMI) on purging behavior during the adolescence for females, but not for males. Interpersonal comparisons operate through the formation of a distorted self-perception: teenage girls with relatively thin female peers perceive themselves as heavier than they actually are. The girls who are more susceptible to peer influences are those having peers who are thinner, more popular, more (verbally) able, and with more educated parents.

for helpful comments. We thank participants at the College of Medicine in Blantyre, the XXVI IUSSP International Population Conference (Marrakech) for very helpful comments and discussions. Daniela Iorio acknowledges financial support from the Barcelona GSE and the government of Catalonia. Raül Santaeulàlia-Llopis thanks the Weidenbaum Center at the Washington University in St. Louis for financial support. We also thank Alannah Glickman, Minho Kim, and Borek Vasicek for excellent research assistance. 4 Albeit not using nationally representative data, a set of papers describes changes in sexual behavior across education groups over time or in response to a specific policy-driven change in the environment (e.g., Asiimwe

Bulimia nervosa (BN) is a serious eating disorder (ED) a-icting a signi…cant number of female teenagers. We compare BN behavior with ED diagnosis among US teenagers using two comparable data samples. We …nd that African Americans are more likely to exhibit BN behavior than Whites, as are girls from low income families. However, Whites are much more likely to be diagnosed with an ED, indicating important racial and class di¤erences in medical attention for BN. Thus greater outreach must be made in terms of diagnosing and treating BN among African American and low income teenage girls.

Eating disorders are an important and growing health concern, and bulimia nervosa (BN) accounts for the largest fraction of eating disorders. Health consequences of BN are substantial and especially serious given the increasingly compulsive nature of the disorder. However, remarkably little is known about the mechanisms underlying the persistent nature of BN and the socioeconomic groups that are most likely to be at risk. Using a unique panel data set on young women and instrumental variable techniques, we document that unobserved heterogeneity plays a role in the persistence of BN, but strikingly up to two thirds is due to true state dependence. Our results, together with support from the medical literature, provide strong evidence that bulimia should be considered an addiction. We also …nd that African Americans are more likely to exhibit and persist in bulimic behavior than Whites; as are girls from low income families compared to middle and high income families. These results stand in stark contrast to the popular conceptions of who is most likely to experience BN, and we argue that this is due to di¤erences in the diagnosis across racial and income classes. Our …ndings have important implications for public policy since they i) provide direction to policy makers regarding which adolescent females are most at risk for BN, and ii) suggest that the timing of the policy is crucial: preventive educational programs should be coupled with more intense (rehabilitation) treatment at the early stages of bingeing and purging behaviors. Our results are robust to di¤erent model speci…cations and identifying assumptions.

Race, Social Class, and Bulimia Nervosa *In this paper we explore a serious eating disorder, bulimia nervosa (BN), which afflicts a surprising number of girls in the US. We challenge the long-held belief that BN primarily affects high income White teenagers, using a unique data set on adolescent females evaluated regarding their tendencies towards bulimic behaviors independent of any diagnoses or treatment they have received. Our results reveal that African Americans are more likely to exhibit bulimic behavior than Whites; as are girls from low income families compared to middle and high income families. We use another data set to show that who is diagnosed with an eating disorder is in accord with popular beliefs, suggesting that African American and low-income girls are being under-diagnosed for BN. Our findings have important implications for public policy since they provide direction to policy makers regarding which adolescent females are most at risk for BN. Our results are robust to different model specifications and identifying assumptions.