@article{Bonnet:252685,
      recid = {252685},
      author = {Bonnet, Celine and Requillart, Vincent},
      title = {What is to be expected from food taxes?},
      journal = {INRA Sciences Sociales},
      address = {2014-09},
      number = {910-2016-71846},
      series = {ISS},
      pages = {4},
      year = {2014},
      abstract = {In the fight against rising obesity, public authorities  have implemented policies over the last 10 years aiming to  change food behaviours. In France, in 2001, the Health  Minister launched the French National Nutritional Health  Programme. Most of the political tools implemented aim to  bring information to consumers in order to help them make  more “sensible” choices from a nutritional point of view.  However, the actions completed so far have not  significantly slowed the growth in obesity. Other types of  tools aiming to modify the consumer market environment have  rarely been used. Among those, price changes via taxes or  subsidies are often debated but rarely implemented.
In  Europe, several countries like Hungary, Finland or Denmark  recently implemented taxes on products deemed to be harmful  to the health. In France, since January 1st 2012,  Non-Alcoholic Refreshing Beverages (NARB) have been taxed  up to 7.16 €cents per litre. From the French example, we  present a synthesis of the potential effects of the  implementation of nutritional taxes. Since there are few  examples of implementation of nutritional taxes, most  analyses of their potential impact on consumption and  health are ex ante, relying on simulations. The models  used, estimated on past consumption observations, enable  assessments of consumption changes induced by the price  changes of one or several goods. The studies on the French  case integrate not only consumers’ reactions to the price  changes of goods but also the impact of the implementation  of the tax on product prices, and that is its main  originality. Beverage producers and retailers may partially  offset the tax by reducing their margins, or pass on more  than the tax amount to the final price by increasing their  margins. Our work shows that these price adjustment  strategies depend on the type of tax implemented. It also  enables the assessment of the impact of tax on sugar  consumption through beverages by integrating the transfer  of consumption between various types of beverages.},
      url = {http://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/252685},
      doi = {https://doi.org/10.22004/ag.econ.252685},
}