Food taxes and subsidies will probably protect health & reduce inequalities – but the devil is in the detail

Wednesday, October 9th, 2013 | TONY BLAKELY | 2 Comments

Professors Tony Blakely, Cliona Ni Mhurchu and Nick Wilson

Professor Cliona Ni Mhurchu

Research teams we lead have published two papers in the last few weeks on food taxes and subsidies – both of which depend on what are called price elasticities.  Timely, in light of the launch last week of Appetite for Destruction that is focusing public attention on our food environment, including taxes and subsidies on food. Continue reading

Does change in income and deprivation change your smoking risk? Yes, but in different directions.

Thursday, September 12th, 2013 | TONY BLAKELY | 5 Comments

Professor Tony Blakely

Everyone knows that lower socioeconomic groups are more likely to smoke.  But why?  Is it because of things like less education or more deprivation actually causing you to smoke?  Or is it other correlated things like personality?  The answer to these questions matter, both for tobacco control policy and political debate.  Moreover, not all is as you might expect, and it differs for deprivation and income. Continue reading

Chewing the fat on a saturated fat tax

Tuesday, August 6th, 2013 | gibju57p | 2 Comments

Associate Professor Nick Wilson, University of Otago Wellington

An article we published last week generated plenty of debate [1] (some thoughtful, some distortionary), and in particular debate on the complexities of taxing food. In this blog I argue that, yes, such tax packages have to be well designed (and more research would be helpful), but nevertheless that there is much that could be potentially gained by taxes on saturated fat. Continue reading