This paper shows that if an individual's health costs are U-shaped in weight with a minimum at some healthy weight … paternalistic tax on unhealthy food mitigates the individual's weight problem (intensive margin), but does not induce the individual … to choose healthy weight (extensive margin). Implementing healthy weight requires a further distortion (e.g. subsidy on …

Rising prevalence of obesity among adults and children is a major policy issue in many countries. Two widely discussed … instruments to address obesity are a tax on unhealthy foods (fat tax) and a subsidy on healthy foods (thin subsidy). We compare … for healthy and unhealthy meals. We show that the policy which reduces obesity under the most general conditions is the …

This paper shows that if an individual's health costs are U-shaped in weight with a minimum at some healthy weight … paternalistic tax on unhealthy food mitigates the individual's weight problem (intensive margin), but does not induce the individual … to choose healthy weight (extensive margin). Implementing healthy weight requires a further distortion (e.g. subsidy on …