Review: Taxes on sugar-sweetened beverages: Political economy, and effects on prices, purchases, and consumption

In response to a rise in obesity and diet-related chronic diseases such as diabetes, countries worldwide have sought ways to incentivize healthier diets. One of the most common recent policies is taxing sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs). This article introduces a virtual special collection of selected scholarship on SSB taxes that was published in Elsevier journals such as Food Policy, the Journal of Health Economics, and Economics & Human Biology. This article also summarizes the results of those studies regarding the political economy of SSB taxes, and how SSB taxes affect prices, sales, consumption, employment, and tax avoidance behaviors.