Traditional economic analysis implies that because the net externalities from tobacco use are small and tobacco taxes are borne disproportionately by lower-income individuals, taxes on tobacco products should be relatively low. We reexamine these arguments in the framework of a more accurate model of human behavior, where in each period a person has a taste for immediate gratification she would...

• A large impact on population health (i.e. >100,000 DALYs prevented per intervention) can be achieved by a limited number of cost-effective interventions: taxation of tobacco, alcohol and unhealthy foods; regulating the salt content of processed food; improving the efficiency of blood pressureand cholesterollowering drugs; gastric banding for severe obesity; and an intensive SunSmart campaign.

As taxation is one of the key public policy domains influencing population health, and as there is a legal, strategic, and programmatic basis for health impact assessment (HIA) in Finland, we analyzed all 235 government bills on tax legislation over the years 2007–2014 to see whether the health impacts of the tax bills had been assessed. We found that health impacts had been assessed for 13 bil...

Optimal Piecewise Linear Income Taxation Given its significance in practice, piecewise linear taxation has received relatively little attention in the literature. This paper offers a simple and transparent analysis of its main characteristics. We fully characterize optimal tax parameters for the cases in which budget sets are convex and nonconvex respectively. A numerical analysis of a discrete...

This article assesses the effects of comprehensive tobacco control policies on diverse subpopulations of girls and women who are at increased vulnerability to tobacco use because of disadvantage. The authors report on a recent assessment of experimental literature examining tobacco taxation; smoking location restrictions in public and private spaces; and sales restrictions. A comprehensive sear...