Or ChatGPT…

I think I would’ve correctly guessed 3/5 (already saw mine before your post). The two I wouldn’t have guessed were ones where I think I listened to them very frequently but only for a relatively short period of time during the year.

Check out the full paper for additional details regarding our findings, data and methods, and limitations.

Since the paper was published a few weeks ago, it has been featured on @npr.org and in pieces by CNN, US News and World Report, the Chicago Booth Review, and Food Fix, among others.

NPR Link: www.npr.org/sections/hea...

Several other studies find that even a 15-20% decrease in SSB consumption can generate significant health benefits and are highly cost-effective in reducing societal healthcare expenditures. Estimates range from $30-50 billion nationally over an average individual lifetime.

Our estimates generally support prior estimates from single-city studies; compared to a recent international meta-analysis, our results suggest slightly higher pass-through, a larger reduction in volume purchased, and moderately less demand-responsiveness to price changes.

We also find no impacts of these taxes on cross-border purchasing of SSBs. It should be noted that we examine 3-digit zip code level jurisdictions, which are relatively large.

This next figure is a range plot depicting both the composite and individual city results (which are somewhat underpowered).

These two figures show the main findings from the composite ASC estimation on SSB (1) shelf prices and (2) volume sales. Our results suggest a unit-elastic demand elasticity for SSBs. Our estimates for changes in shelf prices imply a 92% tax pass-through rate to consumers.

We use nationwide 3-digit zip-code level retail scanner data from Nielsen and the recently developed augmented synthetic control (ASC) method to examine the composite impact of SSB taxes in five large U.S. cities on SSB prices and volume purchased.

Unbiased estimation of a composite effect is critical for understanding the generalizability of tax impacts to different localities featuring heterogeneous characteristics; such an estimate is complementary to existing estimates from individual localities with SSB taxes in place.

Many studies have examined the impact of SSB taxes on prices and consumption. Yet, nearly all US SSB tax studies analyze a single taxed city compared with a control city, and the couple that examine multiple cities rely on conventional TWFE approaches that may suffer from bias.

SSBs are a major source of non-nutritional calories and added sugar, which is associated with serious adverse health outcomes. Nearly 100 countries now feature some sort of national excise tax on SSBs. 7 jurisdictions in the US currently have one in place.