The obesity epidemic and excessive consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages have led to proposals of economics-based interventions to promote healthy eating in the United States. Targeted food and beverage taxes and subsidies are prominent examples of such potential intervention strategies. This paper examines the differential effects of taxing sugar-sweetened beverages by calories and by ounces on beverage demand. To properly measure the extent of substitution and complementarity between beverage products, we developed a fully modified distance metric model of differentiated product demand that endogenizes the cross-price effects. We illustrated the proposed methodology in a linear approximate almost ideal demand system, although other flexible demand systems can also be used. In the empirical application using supermarket scanner data, the product-level demand model consists of 178 beverage products with combined market share of over 90%. The novel demand model outperformed the conventional distance metric model in non-nested model comparison tests and in terms of the economic significance of model predictions. In the fully modified model, a calorie-based beverage tax was estimated to cost $1.40 less in compensating variation than an ounce-based tax per 3,500 beverage calories reduced. This difference in welfare cost estimates between two tax strategies is more than three times as much as the difference estimated by the conventional distance metric model. If applied to products purchased from all sources, a 0.04-cent per kcal tax on sugar-sweetened beverages is predicted to reduce annual per capita beverage intake by 5,800 kcal.

中文翻译：

---

按盎司或按卡路里：替代含糖饮料税收策略的差异化影响

肥胖症的流行和含糖饮料的过度消费导致了基于经济学的干预措施的建议，以促进美国的健康饮食。有针对性的食品和饮料税和补贴是此类潜在干预策略的突出例子。本文研究了按卡路里和盎司对含糖饮料征税对饮料需求的不同影响。为了正确衡量饮料产品之间的替代和互补程度，我们开发了一个完全修改的差异化产品需求距离度量模型，该模型将交叉价格效应内生化。我们在线性近似几乎理想的需求系统中说明了所提出的方法，尽管也可以使用其他灵活的需求系统。在使用超市扫描仪数据的实证应用中，产品级需求模型包括178种饮料产品，合计市场份额超过90%。新的需求模型在非嵌套模型比较测试和模型预测的经济意义方面优于传统的距离度量模型。在完全修改的模型中，每减少 3,500 卡路里饮料，基于卡路里的饮料税在补偿变化方面的成本估计比基于盎司的税少 1.40 美元。两种税收策略之间福利成本估计的差异是传统距离度量模型估计差异的三倍多。如果适用于从所有来源购买的产品，预计对含糖饮料征收每千卡 0.04 美分的税，每年人均饮料摄入量将减少 5,800 千卡。