Tag: utility

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What price health?

The US Institute of Medicine of the National Academies has recently published a 92-page on report on childhood obesity and the use of taxes on junk foods to tackle the problem. In the report, titled Local Government Actions to Prevent Childhood Obesity, “a panel of experts suggested such taxes could play an important role in helping children make healthier eating choices”.

Meanwhile, in Australia, the Federal Government’s preventive health taskforce argued, amongst other things, that “junk food advertising should be phased out, the cost of cigarettes should be more than $20 a packet, and soft drinks and cask wine should be hit with higher taxes”.

So how effective are higher taxes in achieving a reduction in ill health associated with eating, drinking and smoking? If adopted, what is the socially optimum design and rates of such taxes? What other complementary policies could be adopted? The following articles consider the issues.

More support for a junk-food tax Los Angeles Times (2/9/09)
Tax junk food, drinks to fight child obesity-report Reuters (31/8/09)
Could Raising Taxes on Junk Food Curb Obesity? eMaxHealth (2/9/09)
Junk food and tobacco under fire The Age (Australia) (2/9/09)
What price health? The Australian (2/9/09)

Questions

  1. For what reasons does the free market fail to achieve an optimum level of consumption of junk foods, alcohol and cigarettes?
  2. How would you determine the socially optimum level of consumption of such products?
  3. How are the price, income and cross-price elasticities of demand, and the price elasticity of supply, relevant to assessing the effectiveness of taxes for reducing the consumption of unhealthy products?
  4. What determines the incidence of taxes on unhealthy products?
  5. What other policies would you advocate to tackle the problems associated with consuming unhealthy products? How would they affect the price elasticity of demand for such products.
  6. To what extent do the objectives of social efficiency and equity conflict when designing appropriate policies to discourage unhealthy consumption?
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Why we buy what we buy

Behavioural economics looks at the way in which people behave when making economic decisions about spending. It looks essentially and what people buy and why they buy it. Research in behavioural economics has started to question some of the traditional economic assumptions of rationality and argues that habits and other psychological factors may be more important than conventionally assumed.

Why we buy what we buy Guardian (20/5/08)

Questions

1. Explain what is meant by ‘behavioural economics’.
2. Evaluate the principal factors that people take into account when choosing to buy a consumer good.
3. “….. average people are all far more irrational and more human than economists allow”. Discuss the extent to which this might be true.
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More expensive cigarettes = happier smokers

In the article below Tim Harford (the Undercover Economist) looks at rationality in the purchase of cigarettes. He consider whether healthy and happy smokers are the same thing and the extent to which smokers would be happier if cigarettes were more expensive.

Why smokers are happier when cigarettes cost more MSN Slate (17/5/08)

Questions

1. Identify the principal factors that determine the level of demand for cigarettes.
2. Given the factors identified in part (a), discuss the likely value of the price elasticity of demand for cigarettes.
3. Discuss the extent to which higher cigarette prices would make smokers happier.