Xiaoyong Zheng , professor of agricultural and resource economics at North Carolina State University, will give a talk, "The Unintended Consequences of Sugar-Sweetened Beverage Taxes on Sales and Prices of Beer Beverages," at noon on Wednesday, March 25, in 157 Hosler Building on the Penn State University Park campus. The event is part of a spring seminar series hosted by the Initiative for Energy and Environmental Economics and Policy (EEEPI). The talk is free and open to the public.
Sugar-sweetened beverages - such as sodas, energy drinks, and sweetened coffee drinks - are the leading source of added sugars in the American diet, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Berkeley, California, was the first U.S. jurisdiction to implement an excise tax on sugar-sweetened beverages (SSB) in March 2015.
In his talk, Zheng will discuss causal effect of Berkeley's sugar-sweetened beverage tax on beer purchases and prices using retail scanner data from 2014-15.
"Applying both synthetic control and difference-in-differences approaches, we find that the tax reduced beer purchases within Berkeley by 8.9%, while having a negligible effect on beer prices," Zheng said. "Mechanism analysis indicates that the decline in beer sales is driven primarily by cross-border shopping rather than a reduction in overall beer consumption."
Zheng's research focuses on policy-relevant issues in agriculture, food and the environment. His recent work examines topics such as food and nutrient demand, electric vehicles and crop insurance. He received his doctorate in economics from Indiana University at Bloomington.
About EEEPI
Established in 2011, the Initiative for Energy and Environmental Economics and Policy operates as a University-wide initiative at Penn State with support from the Earth and Environmental Systems Institute and the Institute of Energy and the Environment. EEEPI seeks to catalyze research in energy and environmental systems economics across the University and to build a world-class group of economists with interests in interdisciplinary collaboration.
