NBER working paper No. 18750

Presentation given at the Public Economics Lecture, November 2012 in Oxford and Cambridge

Researchers at the Institute for Fiscal Studies have found some similarities as well as some stark differences between the response of households to the current recession and the previous two.

The Home Office today released a consultation on policies aimed at reducing the social costs associated with alcohol consumption. The headline-grabbing proposal is a 45p minimum unit price for alcohol in England and Wales. We find the policy would have a significant impact, affecting almost six in ten off-licence alcohol units. However, it would be preferable to establish a price floor for alcohol through a restructured alcohol tax system in which tax is related to alcohol content more directly and retailers are banned from selling alcohol at less than the tax due.

This report discusses why the government might want to intervene to reduce obesity, and what policy instruments are available.

Presentation to the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Summer Institute, Boston

This presentations was given at the National Heart Forum meeting on 'What is the role of food taxes?' on 29 June 2012 in London.

This presentation was made at a workshop held at the Institute for Fiscal Studies about resource allocation within households in March 2012.

These slides were presented at an IFS workshop, 'Resource Allocation within Households' on 30 March 2012.

The Home Office have unveiled their alcohol strategy to reduce excess alcohol consumption. Notably, it includes a proposal to introduce a minimum price per alcohol unit in England and Wales, suggesting 40p as a likely rate. Analysing the detailed off-licence alcohol purchase data of more than 19,000 households, this observation argues that the policy would be a very significant intervention.

This presentation was given at a seminar at the University of Lancaster on a cross country comparison of demand for nutrients.

These slides were presented to the Office of Fair Trading (OFT).

Yesterday, the Government published a 'call to action' which lays out its strategy for tackling obesity in England. One approach to tackling diet related health problems, which governments are increasingly turning to, is the use of fiscal measures. We look at some of the issues involved in designing a 'fat tax' and under what circumstances such a policy may be effective.

This presentation was given at the European Association for Research in Industrial Economics annual conference in Stockholm on 3rd September 2011.

This presentation was given to the Associate Parliamentary Food and Health Forum in the Commons in April 2011.

In this paper, we discuss the ways in which food markets might fail to deliver the optimal outcome and how this may justify government intervention.

IFS researchers estimate that if a policy like this were rolled out across Britain it could transfer £700 million from alcohol consumers to retailers and manufacturers.

We calculate the impact of a 45p per unit minimum price and describe how different households and retailers would be affected.

This paper seeks to fill this gap by providing an in-depth examination of data from one company, Taylor Nelson Sofres (TNS), recording grocery purchases over five years. We assess how far the ongoing demands of participation lead to 'fatigue' in respondents' recording of their spending and the implications for household attrition, and we provide a detailed comparison of the expenditure data collected by TNS and the well-established Expenditure and Food Survey (EFS). Broadly, we suggest that problems of fatigue and attrition may not be particularly severe, though there are differences in expenditures that cannot be attributed to demographic or time effects and may be suggestive of survey mode effects.

Data from market research firms are increasingly being used by social science researchers. These data provide potentially useful information, including detailed nutritional information and well-measured prices, and their panel structure is appealing as it permits researchers to control for unobservable time-invariant household characteristics and to model dynamic aspects of household behaviour.

seminar, competition commision

The Government is concerned that we are eating too much saturated fat.

This paper documents the potential and actual savings that consumers realize from four particular types of purchasing behavior: purchasing on sale; buying in bulk (at a lower per unit price); buying generic brands; and choosing outlets.

cemmap workshop

Workshop on econometrics of demand