Seminar – How Well Targeted Are Soda Taxes?

Professor Pierre Dubois, Toulouse School of Economics

Soda taxes aim to reduce excessive sugar consumption. Their effectiveness depends on whether they target individuals for whom the harm of consumption is largest. Research estimates demand and accounts for supply-side equilibrium pass-through, exploiting longitudinal data to estimate individual preferences, which allows flexible heterogeneity that is related to a wide array of individual characteristics. Results show that soda taxes are effective at targeting young consumers but not individuals with high total dietary sugar; they impose the highest monetary cost on poorer individuals, but are unlikely to be strongly regressive if accounted for averted future costs from over-consumption.

Speaker bio

Pierre Dubois is Professor of Economics at Toulouse School of Economics (TSE), Fellow of the CEPR and of the Institute for Fiscal Studies in London. His work includes research on industrial organisation, demand models, household behaviour, health and pharmaceuticals, food demand, development economics and applied econometrics.

He has been published in economics journals such as the American Economic Review, Econometrica, the Journal of Political Economy, the Review of Economic Studies, the RAND Journal of Economics, the Review of Economics and Statistics, the Journal of the European Economic Association, the International Journal of Industrial Organization, the Journal of Development Economics and the Journal of Labor Economics.

Professor Dubois received his PhD in economics from EHESS Paris, has been an assistant professor at the University of Montréal, has held visiting positions at Berkeley and Northwestern University and has been Visiting Professor at Harvard University.

He is currently managing Editor of the International Journal of Industrial Organization and associate editor of the European Economic Review, as well as Scientific Director of the Toulouse School of Economics.

Before the seminar, there will be a light lunch available in the Conference Reception at 12:30.