This chapter provides a detailed analysis of the economic, legal and public policy rationales for the application of taxes and other fiscal measures on health-related commodities. The motivation for such taxes has been more often linked to the fiscal revenues generated than to their potential...

Virtually all fiscal measures influence people's health, through their impacts on behaviour, consumption, income and wealth. A narrow subset of fiscal measures, however, can be more directly aimed at improving health by targeting behaviours and risks that are known to be strongly associated with...

BACKGROUND: As the health care economic-evaluation literature continues to grow, a need for sound methods to conduct systematic reviews of the existing evidence is emerging. So far, reviews of economic evaluations have relied upon noncomprehensive sources and have adopted simplistic search...

Virtually all fiscal measures influence people's health, through their impacts on behaviour, consumption, income and wealth. A narrow subset of fiscal measures, however, can be more directly aimed at improving health by targeting behaviours and risks that are known to be strongly associated with...

•There is an evidence base from controlled trials and well-designed observational studies on the effectiveness of a wide range of health promotion and disease prevention interventions that address risk factors to health. These include measures to reduce the risk of smoking and alcohol...

This chapter provides a detailed analysis of the economic, legal and public policy rationales for the application of taxes and other fiscal measures on health-related commodities. The motivation for such taxes has been more often linked to the fiscal revenues generated than to their potential...