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This paper estimates flexible demand systems for heterogeneous households in the United States and links the estimated parameters with an economy-wide model to assess their relative contributions to the social cost of regulation. We estimate elasticities for several final demand categories as well as labor-leisure elasticities that are important for calibrating the labor-leisure choice in the economy-wide model and find that estimated elasticities are relatively similar across regions but vary meaningfully by income. Using the estimated elasticities, we explore the implications of both the functional form and its parameterization in a simplified computable general equilibrium model for the social and distributional costs of illustrative policy scenarios. Model variants with less flexible consumer demand systems overestimate social costs across our entire range of scenarios. Furthermore, we find that parameterizing the model with elasticities that vary with household income is important for adequately characterizing the distributional implications of a policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Consumer food purchasing and willingness to adopt a sustainable healthy diet (SHD) is a key factor affecting the sustainability of the entire food system. Studies have developed scales to measure consumer preferences for particular consumption patterns, while others have sought to empirically define the multiple dimensions of a sustainable food system (environmental, social, economic, etc.). This paper builds on these literatures by tracking consumers' SHD behaviors using a large-scale, longitudinal survey of adults in the United States and mapping them onto multiple systems-level indicators. We wanted to know whether consumers interact with the sustainability of their food along the same principles developed by experts. Our study defines 18 food purchasing behaviors that support the sustainability goals of leading scientific institutions, uses factor analysis to identify the unobserved drivers behind these behaviors, and creates SHD scores to investigate their correlations with other consumer characteristics and behaviors. Factor analysis results show consumer food purchasing is motivated by three underlying sustainability dimensions-Economic Security, Socio-Environment, and Nutrition-which are fewer constructs than often defined by academic researchers. SHD scores reveal higher adoption of behaviors that fall under Economic Security relative to the other two dimensions. All three sustainability constructs are impacted by socio-economic and demographic characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: Beverage taxes came into light with increasing concerns about obesity, particularly among youth. Sugar-sweetened beverages have become a target of anti-obesity initiatives with increasing evidence of their link to obesity. Our paper offers a method for estimating revenues from an excise tax on sugar-sweetened beverages that governments of various levels could direct towards obesity prevention. Model: We construct a model projecting beverage consumption and tax revenues based on best available data on regional beverage consumption, historic trends and recent estimates of the price elasticity of sugar-sweetened beverage demand. Results: The public health impact of beverage taxes could be substantial. An estimated 24% reduction in sugar-sweetened beverage consumption from a penny-per-ounce sugar-sweetened beverage tax could reduce daily per capita caloric intake from sugar-sweetened beverages from the current 190–200cal to 145–150cal, if there is no substitution to other caloric beverages or food. A national penny-per-ounce tax on sugar-sweetened beverages could generate new tax revenue of $79 billion over 2010–2015. Conclusion: A modest tax on sugar-sweetened beverages could both raise significant revenues and improve public health by reducing obesity. To the extent that at least some of the tax revenues get invested in obesity prevention programs, the public health benefits could be even more pronounced. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Using cross-sectional data, this paper estimates a national energy model of fuel choice by both households and firms. Consumers in warmer locations rely relatively more heavily on electricity rather than natural gas, oil, and other fuels. They also use more energy. Climate change will likely increase electricity consumption on cooling but reduce the use of other fuels for heating. On net, American energy expenditures will likely increase, resulting in welfare damages that increase as temperatures rise. For example, if the US warms by 5°C by 2100, we predict annual welfare losses of $57 billion. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]