During the past decade, dozens of countries, regions, and cities have enacted taxes on sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs). They have been primarily motivated by a desire to raise prices, reduce sales and consumption, improve population health, and raise revenue. This review outlines the economic rationale for SSB taxes and illustrates their predicted effects. It reviews the research on the effects of these taxes on retail prices, sales, cross-border shopping, consumption, and product availability. The evidence indicates that the amount by which taxes increase retail prices (also called the pass-through of the tax) varies by jurisdiction, ranging from less than 50% to 100% of the tax. Sales tend to decrease significantly in the taxing jurisdiction, although this seems to be partly offset by residents increasingly shopping outside of the taxing jurisdiction (i.e., engaging in cross-border shopping).Overall, taxes lower consumption of the taxed beverages by adults, although not for all types of beverages or all groups of consumers. We conclude with suggestions for improving the design of such taxes and directions for future research.

This analysis examines whether the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) emergency sick leave provision of the bipartisan Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA) reduced the spread of the virus. Using a difference-in-differences strategy, we compared changes in newly reported COVID-19 cases in states where workers gained the right to take paid sick leave (treatment group) versus in states where workers already had access to paid sick leave (control group) before the FFCRA. We adjusted for differences in testing, day-of-the-week reporting, structural state differences, general virus dynamics, and policies such as stay-athome orders. Compared with the control group and relative to the pre-FFCRA period, states that gained access to paid sick leave through the FFCRA saw around 400 fewer confirmed cases per state per day. This estimate translates into roughly one prevented case per day per 1,300 workers who had newly gained the option to take up to two weeks of paid sick leave.

Policies and practices have proliferated to optimize prescribers’ use of their states’ prescription drug monitoring programs, which are statewide databases of controlled substances dispensed at retail pharmacies. Our study assessed the effectiveness of three such policies: comprehensive legislative mandates to use the program, laws that allow prescribers to delegate its use to office staff, and state participation in interstate data sharing. Our analysis of information from a large commercial insurance database indicated that comprehensive use mandates implemented during 2011–15 were associated with a 6–9 percent reduction in opioid prescriptions with high risk for misuse and overdose. We also found delegate laws to be associated with reductions of a similar magnitude for selected outcomes. In general, the effects of all three policies strengthened over time, especially beginning in the second year after implementation. Our findings support comprehensive use mandates and delegate laws to optimize prescribers’ use of drug monitoring programs, but the results will need updates in the context of evolving state opioid policies—including the increasing integration of drug monitoring data with electronic health records.