Is trade liberalisation a vector for the spread of sugar-sweetened beverages? A cross-national longitudinal analysis of 44 low- and middle-income countries.

ABSTRACT: Does trade and investment liberalisation increase the growth in sales of sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs)? Here, for the first time to our knowledge, we test this hypothesis using a unique data source on SSB-specific trade flows. We test whether lower tariffs effectively increase imports of SSBs, and whether a higher level of imports increase sales of SSBs. Cross-national fixed effects models were used to evaluate the association between SSBs sales and trade liberalisation. SSBs per capita sales data were taken from EuroMonitor, covering 44 low- and middle-income countries from 2001 to 2014, SSBs import data were from TradeMap, Foreign Direct Investment data were from EuroMonitor, and data on applied tariffs on SSB from the World Trade Organisation tariffs database, all 2015 editions. The

SUBMITTER: Mendez Lopez A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5224188 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature