Do Cheeseburger Bills Work? Effects of Tort Reform for Fast Food
研究了美国各州通过“常识消费法案”（即芝士汉堡法案）对快餐公司肥胖相关责任限制的效果，发现该法案促使超重人群更努力减肥并增加蔬果消费，同时影响了快餐业的就业和麦当劳门店所有权结构。
After highly publicized lawsuits against McDonald’s in 2002, 26 states adopted commonsense consumption acts (CCAs)—also known as cheeseburger bills—that greatly limit fast-food companies’ liability for weight-related harms. We provide the first evidence of the effects of CCAs using plausibly exogenous variation in the timing of CCA adoption across states. In two-way fixed-effects models, we find that CCAs significantly increased self-reports of attempts to lose weight and consumption of fruits and vegetables among heavy individuals. We also find some evidence that CCAs increased employment in the fast-food industry. Finally, we find that CCAs significantly increased the number of company-owned McDonald’s restaurants and decreased the number of franchisee-owned McDonald’s restaurants in a state. Overall, our results provide novel evidence supporting a key prediction of tort reform—that it should induce individuals to take more care—and show that industry-specific tort reforms can have meaningful effects on market outcomes.