IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/ausecr/v52y2019i1p19-40.html

Should We Tax Sugar and If So How?

Author

Listed:
  • Peter Lloyd
  • Donald MacLaren

Abstract

This article reviews empirical studies of proposals to tax sugary products in Australia. A corrective tax must be designed carefully if it is to increase national welfare. There is an underlying problem in designing such a tax because consumers are heterogeneous. The best choice of goods to be taxed is the group of sugar‐sweetened‐beverages, the best tax base is the sugar content and the best tax form is a progressive specific tax with two or more levels. We recommend initial rates that are equal to those of the UK tax on SSBs.

Suggested Citation

  • Peter Lloyd & Donald MacLaren, 2019. "Should We Tax Sugar and If So How?," Australian Economic Review, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, vol. 52(1), pages 19-40, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:ausecr:v:52:y:2019:i:1:p:19-40
    DOI: 10.1111/1467-8462.12299
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8462.12299
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/1467-8462.12299?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. repec:acb:agenda:v:15:y:2008:i:2:p:27-44 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Jonathan Pincus, 2018. "Grattan Institute's Case for Sugar Tax Is Not Proven," Australian Economic Review, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, vol. 51(1), pages 41-51, March.
    3. Rachel Griffith & Martin O’Connell & Kate Smith, 2018. "Corrective Taxation and Internalities from Food Consumption," CESifo Economic Studies, CESifo Group, vol. 64(1), pages 1-14.
    4. John Freebairn, 2010. "Taxation and Obesity?," Australian Economic Review, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, vol. 43(1), pages 54-62, March.
    5. Anurag Sharma & Katharina Hauck & Bruce Hollingsworth & Luigi Siciliani, 2014. "The Effects Of Taxing Sugar‐Sweetened Beverages Across Different Income Groups," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 23(9), pages 1159-1184, September.
    6. Pogue, Thomas F & Sgontz, Larry G, 1989. "Taxing to Control Social Costs: The Case of Alcohol," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 79(1), pages 235-243, March.
    7. Jou, Judy & Techakehakij, Win, 2012. "International application of sugar-sweetened beverage (SSB) taxation in obesity reduction: Factors that may influence policy effectiveness in country-specific contexts," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 107(1), pages 83-90.
    8. David R. Just & Gnel Gabrielyan, 2016. "Food and consumer behavior: why the details matter," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 47(S1), pages 73-83, November.
    9. Bonnet, Céline & Réquillart, Vincent, 2013. "Tax incidence with strategic firms in the soft drink market," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 106(C), pages 77-88.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Julio C. Arteaga & Daniel Flores & Edgar Luna, 2021. "The effect of a soft drink tax in Mexico: evidence from time series industry data," Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society, vol. 65(2), pages 349-366, April.
    2. Zarko Kalamov & Marco Runkel, 2020. "Taxes on unhealthy food and externalities in the parental choice of children's diet," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 29(8), pages 938-944, August.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Sainsbury, Emma & Magnusson, Roger & Thow, Anne-Marie & Colagiuri, Stephen, 2020. "Explaining resistance to regulatory interventions to prevent obesity and improve nutrition: A case-study of a sugar-sweetened beverages tax in Australia," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 93(C).
    2. SERSE Valerio,, 2019. "Do sugar taxes affect the right consumers ?," LIDAM Discussion Papers CORE 2019017, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).
    3. Caro, Juan Carlos & Ng, Shu Wen & Taillie, Lindsey Smith & Popkin, Barry M., 2017. "Designing a tax to discourage unhealthy food and beverage purchases: The case of Chile," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 71(C), pages 86-100.
    4. Daniel John Zizzo & Melanie Parravano & Ryota Nakamura & Suzanna Forwood & Marc Suhrcke, 2021. "The impact of taxation and signposting on diet: an online field study with breakfast cereals and soft drinks," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 24(4), pages 1294-1324, December.
    5. Paul Calcott, 2022. "Regulating ingredients in sin goods," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 104(3), pages 1120-1139, May.
    6. Haeck, Catherine & Lawson, Nicholas & Poirier, Krystel, 2022. "Estimating consumer preferences for different beverages using the BLP approach," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 46(C).
    7. Fabrice Etilé & Anurag Sharma, 2015. "Do High Consumers of Sugar‐Sweetened Beverages Respond Differently to Price Changes? A Finite Mixture IV‐Tobit Approach," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 24(9), pages 1147-1163, September.
    8. Jonathan Pincus, 2018. "Grattan Institute's Case for Sugar Tax Is Not Proven," Australian Economic Review, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, vol. 51(1), pages 41-51, March.
    9. Tiboldo, G. & Castellari, E. & Moro, D., 2024. "The distributional implications of health taxes: A case study on the Italian sugar tax," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 126(C).
    10. Chen Zhen & Mary Muth & Abigail Okrent & Shawn Karns & Derick Brown & Peter Siegel, 2019. "Do differences in reported expenditures between household scanner data and expenditure surveys matter in health policy research?," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 28(6), pages 782-800, June.
    11. Fabrice Etilé & Sébastien Lecocq & Christine Boizot-Szantai, 2021. "Market heterogeneity and the distributional incidence of soft-drink taxes: evidence from France [Regressive sin taxes, with an application to the optimal soda tax]," European Review of Agricultural Economics, Oxford University Press and the European Agricultural and Applied Economics Publications Foundation, vol. 48(4), pages 915-939.
    12. Fabrice Etilé, 2019. "The Economics of Diet and Obesity: Public Policy," Post-Print hal-02154445, HAL.
    13. Bonnet, Céline & Réquillart, Vincent, 2023. "The effects of taxation on the individual consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 51(C).
    14. repec:ocp:rtrade:pb1744 is not listed on IDEAS
    15. Ellalee, Haider & Alali, Walid Y., 2022. "A Welfare and Pass-Through Effects of Regulations within Imperfect Competition," MPRA Paper 116512, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    16. Jon P. Nelson, 2014. "Gender Differences In Alcohol Demand: A Systematic Review Of The Role Of Prices And Taxes," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 23(10), pages 1260-1280, October.
    17. Asplund, Marcus & Friberg, Richard & Wilander, Fredrik, 2007. "Demand and distance: Evidence on cross-border shopping," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(1-2), pages 141-157, February.
    18. Joseph P. Newhouse, 2021. "An Ounce of Prevention," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 35(2), pages 101-118, Spring.
    19. Bo Yang & Xin Huang & Qin Liu & Shenglan Tang & Mary Story & Yiwen Chen & Maigeng Zhou, 2020. "Child Nutrition Trends Over the Past Two Decades and Challenges for Achieving Nutrition SDGs and National Targets in China," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 17(4), pages 1-12, February.
    20. Erik Nesson & Vinish Shrestha, 2021. "The effects of false identification laws on underage alcohol‐related traffic fatalities," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(9), pages 2264-2283, September.
    21. Pierre Dubois & Rachel Griffith & Martin O'Connell, 2020. "How Well Targeted Are Soda Taxes?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 110(11), pages 3661-3704, November.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:ausecr:v:52:y:2019:i:1:p:19-40. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/mimelau.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.