Funke_et_al_2021_Towards_optimal_meat_taxation_WP_Jan

1 University of Oxford (Environmental Change Institute at the School of Geography and the Environment and Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School); corresponding author: franziska.funke@ouce.ox.ac.uk 2 University of Oxford (Environmental Change Institute at the School of Geography and the Environment and Institute for New Economics Thinking at the Oxford Martin School), Pot. [...] The social cost of meat Pricing meat appropriately requires assessment of the magnitude of environmental externalities and health effects associated with livestock farming and meat consumption. [...] As far as these results are transferable to the case of meat taxation, we can expect that the second-best tax rate on meat increases with the magnitude and pervasiveness of internalities in the population, and the responsiveness of consumers to meat price changes. [...] By further encouraging the uptake of meat substitutes, the introduction of a meat tax, as an indirect alternative to higher R&D subsidies, could accelerate the development and commercialization of cultured meat and meat analogues. [...] The success of meat alternatives, however, will to a large extent depend on the degree of substitutability between meat and alternative protein products, with those that are cheap and have the taste and “mouth-feel” of meat more likely to gain the largest market share (Carlsson et al., 2021).