As of August 2019, 50 jurisdictions levied taxes on soft drinks, many of which have been implemented in the past couple of years

	School of Economics Undergraduate assessment brief

Students are strongly advised to submit their work ahead of the deadline. Should you have a problem with submission to Blackboard you should email econ-ug@bristol.ac.uk for guidance immediately.

• Your answer should not exceed 1500 words. Exceeding this word-limit will incur a penalty. You should includean accurate word count on the front cover of the assignment. Details relating to penalties are at the end of thisdocument.
• Assignments handed in after the deadline, without a pre-arranged extension, will be subject to late penalties.Details relating to penalties are at the end of this document.
• A reference list/bibliography is recommended. This list does not contribute to the word count. Information onreferencing can be found via our library.
• Please use Arial or Calibri font at 12-point.
• Your assignment should be combined into a single document and submitted in pdf format with a documentname containing your student number.
• You may include photographs or scans of your own hand-drawn, labelled diagrams or calculations. We wouldadvise you to generate your own diagrams but if you include diagrams or pictures that you have not producedyourself, or are modified versions of existing images, you should ensure you reference them appropriately.Figures and tables should normally be included inline in the text.
• Your answer will be assessed using the University Marking Criteria.

This is a piece of COURSEWORK that contributes to your Unit mark and you can:

• Use resources to support you in completing your answer.
• Draw upon a range of accepted resources including, your own notes, lecture slides/recordings, course material,textbooks, journal articles, online resources. ALL work should be written in your own words.
• Ask for help from your personal tutors or academic lecturers if you do not understand an aspect of thecoursework.
• Broad discussion with your tutors, fellow students, friends and family on the assessment topic and yourideas/approach may help you to further your knowledge and understanding.
• Use your network of family and friends to gain support and encouragement during the assessment period.

Please remember this is a formal assessment and you should behave in a manner consistent with our values. This means

you cannot:

• Allow others to directly contribute to your written answer by revising or adding to the academic content. This iscollusion and is against University Regulations.
• Share your assessment with others or ask others to share their work with you.
• Copy and paste any material (text, images, coding, calculations) from other sources, including teaching materialand shared revision notes directly into your answer without appropriate acknowledgement. This is plagiarismand is against University Regulations. There is advice about referencing from the University Library.
• Pay another person or company to complete the assessment for you. This is contract cheating and is againstUniversity Regulations.

We are assessing your knowledge and understanding of the concepts and models covered in the course to date, and your ability to apply the material learned in a critical way. You should not rely on AI tools such as ChatGPT to generate your answers. If we suspect that your answers have been generated in this way, you will be investigated under the contract cheating process for failing to meet the learning objectives for this assessment.

ASSESSMENT BRIEF

“As of August 2019, 50 jurisdictions levied taxes on soft drinks, many of which have been implemented in the past couple of years… The majority of taxes on soft drinks apply to drinks containing added sugar. Such taxes aim to reduce sugar consumption by increasing the price of sugary drinks, which is likely to lead to a reduction in purchases and a commensurate reduction in consumption. A tax may also lead to reductions in sugar consumption through other channels; for example, due to product reformulation to lower sugar content, or by conveying information about the health costs of sugar consumption. The strength of these effects depends on how the tax is structured, as well as how people and firms respond to the tax.”

Griffith et al. (2019), The evidence on the effects of soft drinks taxes, IFS

In the UK, a soft drinks tax for sugar sweetened beverages (SSBs) was introduced in 2018. For drinks containing 5g or more sugar per litre, the rate is 18p tax per litre sold; for drinks containing 8g or more sugar per 100ml, the tax is 24p per litre sold. The tax is paid by the manufacturer. Other countries such as Italy are planning to introduce similar taxes.

Task: Assume you are working for a country which has not imposed a soft drinks levy before. Write a short policy report to inform government policymakers about how firms producing SSBs may respond to the introduction of a soft drinks levy, focusing in particular on the effects of the tax on price and sales. For your baseline answer, assume that firms are unable to reformulate their products to reduce sugar content. Additionally, discuss how your analysis would differ if companies had the option to substitute sugar with alternative sweeteners.

Your report must not exceed 1500 words in total and it must comply with the further guidance on content and structure below.

FURTHER GUIDANCE

CONTENT:

In your answer you must draw on the following economic concepts and models:

• Firms with price-setting power
• Profit maximisation
• Price elasticity of demand
• Tax incidence
• Consumer and Producer Surplus

You can use additional material introduced in this unit where appropriate.

STRUCTURE:

Your report should not exceed 1500 words in total and it should consist of three parts:

• Non-technical summary
  • The summary should provide an intuitive answer to the above question, targeted at a professional audience who are not familiar with economics.
  • will use the conclusions from the technical appendix in a way that is informative and appropriate for the audience and will also likely draw on data to inform the argument (possibly accompanied by graphs) and further reading from good quality sources (for example, academic journals and not high school revision websites).
  • will contain an introduction and a conclusion, as well as the argument.
  • This section is expected to be approximately the same length as the technical appendix, but the exact division of words is at your discretion, as long as you do not exceed 1500 words in total.

• Technical Appendix:
  • This section should be used to show and explain the formal model(s) you use in your argument in the main report and should be targeted at an audience with some knowledge of economics.
  • This section will likely contain a combination of diagrams, some mathematical notation and paragraphs of text (not bullet points) to explain the models and what they show.
  • This section is expected to be approximately the same length as the main report, but the exact division of words is at your discretion, as long as you do not exceed 1500 words in total.
• References:
  • The reference list should be provided at the end of the report and is not included in the word count.

HOW THIS WORK WILL BE ASSESSED

Work will be marked in line with the university marking criteria (which can be found at the end of this brief). This work will be marked with a particular focus on:

1. Correct Economics (70%): Are graphical and/or mathematical models listed in the further guidance used correctly? Is it clear how the models inform the narrative of the argument to explain economic behaviour? Is the link between further reading and the models in the technical appendix understood and clearly explained?
2. Appropriate Communication Style (25%): Is an appropriate style of communication used in each section? Is the main report clear, logical and accessible to a non-specialist audience? Is the technical appendix clearly and logically explained for a specialist audience?
3. Presentation (5%): Is formal referencing used appropriately (including in-text citations, data sources for any graphs generated and a formal reference list at the end)? Are images labelled correctly (eg. “Figure 1”) and used in the discussion in the text? 
   • fixed absolute penalty of 10 marks is applied for each 24-hour period work is submitted after the agreed deadline. Please note, weekend days count towards the calculation of late penalties. Public holidays in England, and University closure days do not.
   • mark of zero is automatically applied to work submitted late such that at least four such 24-hour periods have elapsed.
   • Direct quotations will count towards the word-count
   • Reference lists/bibliographies will not count within the word-count
   • Coversheets will not count within the word counts
   • Tables and figures (i.e. diagrams) will not count within the word counts. 
   • you include a quote, it should be in quotation marks, and a page number included in the in-text reference.
   • Whilst you should normally avoid larger quotes, if you include them, you should also indent the text.
   • not list papers in your reference list that you have not referenced in the paper

You can find the grade descriptors for each criterion for this assessment on the penultimate page of this brief.

>>>> READ THE FOLLOWING PAGES FOR DETAILS ON PLAGIARISM, LATE PENALTIES, WORD COUNT PENALTIES, REFERENCING AND GRADE DESCRIPTORS >

Penalties for late work

Assignments handed in after the deadline, without a pre-arranged extension will be subject to the following penalty:

Penalties for work over the maximum word count

You are expected to include a word-count on the first page of the assignment. Footnotes should be avoided.

If you are found to have put an inaccurate word-count on your submission, a penalty of 5 marks may be imposed, over and above the penalties below:

For example, for a 2,000 word assignment, if a student handed in a piece of work consisting of 2,050 words, your mark would be reduced by 5 marks. This is because the piece of work is between 0% and 5% over the maximum limit.

Academic Integrity

In academic writing, plagiarism is the inclusion of any idea or any language from someone else without giving due credit by citing and referencing that source in your work. This applies if the source is print or electronic, published or unpublished, another student’s work, or any other person.

The University’s Examination Regulations state that “Any thesis, dissertation, essay, or other course work must be the student’s own work and must not contain plagiarised material. Any instance of plagiarism in such coursework will be treated as an offence under these regulations.” (Section 3.1).

The Examination Regulations give information on the University’s procedures for dealing with cases of plagiarism in undergraduate programmes (Section 4)

More information about plagiarism, and how to avoid it is available from the Library website.

Referencing

• you reference papers in your answers, you should reference them using a consistent referencing system, such as the Harvard referencing system; you should normally cite sources in the text. As a general rule, you should avoid using footnotes to reference.
• you cite a paper in your essay, you should also include a full reference to the paper in the reference list at the end of the paper.

Assignment marking criteria

Note: Because the marking criteria consider a number of dimensions, it is unlikely that a single piece of work fits nicely into all of the descriptions above. For example, a piece of work may have excellent presentation, but due to significant errors, and major deficiencies, the piece of work may still be awarded a fail mark.

University marking criteria

Note: Because the marking criteria consider a number of dimensions, it is unlikely that a single piece of work fits nicely into all of the descriptions above. For example, a piece of work may have excellent presentation, but due to significant errors, and major deficiencies, the piece of work may still be awarded a fail mark.