Time Spent Exercising and Obesity: An Application of Lewbel’s Instrumental Variables Method

Charles Courtemanche, Joshua Pinkston () and Jay Stewart

No 26670, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: This paper examines the role physical activity plays in determining body mass using data from the American Time Use Survey. Our work is the first to address the measurement error that arises when time use during a single day—rather than average daily time use over an extended period—is used as an explanatory variable. We show that failing to account for day-to-day variation in activities results in the effects of time use on a typical day being understated. Furthermore, we account for the possibility that physical activity and body mass are jointly determined by implementing Lewbel’s instrumental variables estimator that exploits first-stage heteroskedasticity rather than traditional exclusion restrictions. Our results suggest that, on average, physical activity reduces body mass by less than would be predicted by simple calorie expenditure-to-weight formulas, implying compensatory behavior such as increased caloric intake.

JEL-codes: C21 I10 I12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-spo
Note: EH
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Published as Charles Courtemanche & Joshua C. Pinkston & Jay Stewart, 2020. "Time spent exercising and obesity: An application of Lewbel’s instrumental variables method," Economics & Human Biology, .

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w26670.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Time spent exercising and obesity: An application of Lewbel’s instrumental variables method (2021)
Working Paper: Time Spent Exercising and Obesity: An Application of Lewbel’s Instrumental Variables Method (2020)
Working Paper: Time Spent Exercising and Obesity: An Application of Lewbel's Instrumental Variables Method (2020)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:26670

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w26670

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().