Dr Toni Mora, vice-rector for research at UIC Barcelona and director of the Research Institute for Evaluation and Public Policies, presented the paper Do consumers respond to “sin taxes” heterogeneously? New evidence from the tax on sugary drinks using longitudinal scanner data on 24 May at the second Catalan Economic Society Conference, held at the Institute for Catalan Studies.
In the paper, Dr Mora analyses the consumption of all beverages: sugary, sugar-free, alcoholic and non-alcoholic. According to the study’s results, the consumption of sugary beverages in Catalonia has fallen 2.2% as a result of the Catalan government’s tax on bottled sugary drinks, approved on 1 May 2017. This reduction was especially noticeable with regard to soft drinks, whose consumption has fallen almost 17%.
However, the study shows that, whilst the consumption of beverages such as soft drinks has declined, the consumption of other sugary drinks, such as teas, horchata and vegetable drinks, has risen 9.1%, whilst the consumption of isotonic drinks has risen 33.3%.
The conference gathered researchers from all areas of economics. The two keynote speakers were Drew Fudenberg, from MIT, and Jordi Galí, from the Research Centre for International Economics at UPF.
