Combining empirical industrial organisation methods, consumer demand systems and epidemiological risk modelling to compare the impacts of alcohol price policies on alcohol markets, alcohol consumption and cancer incidence in France
Creators: name: Etilé, Fabrice
name: Lecocq, Sébastien
name: Bonnet, Céline
name: Julia, Chantal
name: Orozco, Valérie
name: Touvier, Mathilde
Publisher: name: Open Science Framework
Year: 2022
Subjects: subject: Medicine and Health Sciences
subject: Social and Behavioral Sciences

description: 3. Description: International public health organisations such as the WHO or the OECD recommend the implementation of volumetric alcohol excise tax and minimum unit price policies to reduce alcohol-related harms. Yet, few countries have implemented price-based alcohol control policies. Existing empirical evidence provided by ex-post evaluation studies do not allow testing whether one option is more effective than another at reducing alcohol-related health damages, because the structure of alcohol demand and supply varies from one country to another, along with the design of price regulation policies. This study will use an economic and epidemiological modelling approach to provide comparative evidence on the economic and epidemiological impacts of four alcohol price policy scenario for France: (S1) Replacing all existing alcohol-specific taxes by a uniform volumetric tax on the pure alcohol content of products; (S2) Replacing all existing alcohol-specific taxes by a volumetric tax that progressively increases with the pure alcohol content of products; (S3) Implementing a minimum unit price per standard unit of alcohol (10g of ethanol); (S4) Implementing a minimum unit price per standard unit of alcohol, and replacing all existing alcohol-specific taxes by a volumetric tax that progressively increases with the pure alcohol content of products. Results will be produced by combining econometric, statistical, and epidemiological models. The econometric models were calibrated on household purchase data provided by KantarWorldPanel for 2013-2014. These models account for: (i) household choices in quality and quantity over products offered within six alcohol categories (ciders, beers, aperitifs, spirits, still wines, sparkling wines), in particular substitutions between and within categories; (ii) supply-side price reactions to the changes in consumer behaviours produced by price policies. They will be used to simulate the impacts of price policies on prices and household purchase choices. Statistical models were also calibrated on household purchase data provided by KantarWorldPanel for 2013-2014. They will be used to predict the impact of changes in household purchases on average alcohol intakes by age-sex categories. The epidemiological model was developed for a previous study (Ren etal., 2021) and will be used to predict the impact of changes in average alcohol intakes by age-sex categories on population-level cancer incidence and mortality, using aggregate consumption data by age-sex categories from the Health Barometer 2014 and the Nutrinet cohort 2014. Ren, Y., Chase, E., d'Almeida, T., Allègre, J., Latino-Martel, P., Deschamps, V., ... &amp; Julia, C. (2021). Modelling the number of avoidable new cancer cases in France attributable to alcohol consumption by following official recommendations: a simulation study. Addiction, 116(9), 2316-2325.