The Unintended Consequences of Sugar‐Sweetened Beverage Taxes on Sales and Prices of Beer Beverages

This paper estimates the causal effect of Berkeley's sugar-sweetened beverage (SSB) tax on beer purchases and prices using retail scanner data from 2014 to 2015. Applying both synthetic control and difference-in-differences (DID) approaches, we find that the tax reduced beer purchases within Berkeley by 8.9%, while having a negligible effect on beer prices. Mechanism analysis indicates that the decline in beer sales is driven primarily by cross-border shopping rather than a reduction in overall beer consumption.