American Economic Review Vol. 110 No. 11 2020

How Well Targeted Are Soda Taxes?

Pierre Dubois¹; Rachel Griffith²; Martin O’Connell³

¹ Toulouse School of Economics (email: ) · ² Institute for Fiscal Studies and University of Manchester (email: ) · ³ Institute for Fiscal Studies (email: )

Abstract

Soda taxes aim to reduce excessive sugar consumption. We assess who is most impacted by soda taxes. We estimate demand using micro longitudinal data covering on-the-go purchases, and exploit the panel dimension to estimate individual-specific preferences. We relate these preferences and counterfactual predictions to individual characteristics and show that soda taxes are relatively effective at targeting the sugar intake of the young, are less successful at targeting the intake of those with high total dietary sugar, and are unlikely to be strongly regressive especially if consumers benefit from averted internalities.

DOI

10.1257/aer.20171898

Volume

110

Issue

11

Pages

3661-3704

Language

en

Sources

bibtex:phds-export.bib openalex crossref

Cite

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