Label or taxes: Why not both? Testing nutritional mixed policies in the lab

Paolo Crosetto, Laurent Muller and Bernard Ruffieux

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2025, vol. 229, issue C

Abstract: We run an incentivized framed laboratory experiment to evaluate the interaction of labelling (Nutri-Score) and pricing policies (fat taxes and thin subsidies) on the food shopping of a sample of French consumers. Taxes and subsidies, designed to fit Nutri-Score, are differentiated according to their magnitude (large or small), and their salience (explicit or implicit). We exploit a difference-in-difference design, whereby subjects shop for real from a catalog of 290 products twice, first without any labelling nor pricing policy, and then a second time with one of five different combinations of labelling and pricing policies. Results show that: (i) when implemented alone, taxes and subsidies are less effective than labelling, especially when implicit and when small in magnitude; (ii) policies mixing pricing and labelling are strongly sub-additive; (iii) consumers would benefit from such policies in terms of expenditure at the expense of the State.

Keywords: Nutritional policies; Labels; Price policy; Laboratory experiment; Nutri-Score (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C81 C91 D81 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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Working Paper: Label or taxes: why not both? Testing nutritional mixed policies in the lab (2024)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:229:y:2025:i:c:s0167268124004396

DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2024.106825

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