Heated tobacco products in Serbia: Tax differentials, relative prices, and excise tax pass-through.

IF 2.4 4区医学 Q2 PUBLIC, ENVIRONMENTAL & OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH Tobacco Induced Diseases Pub Date : 2026-10-05 eCollection Date: 2026-01-01 DOI:10.18332/tid/231126

Aleksandar Zdravković, Jovan Zubović, Boban Nedeljković

{"title":"Heated tobacco products in Serbia: Tax differentials, relative prices, and excise tax pass-through.","authors":"Aleksandar Zdravković, Jovan Zubović, Boban Nedeljković","doi":"10.18332/tid/231126","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Introduction: Heated tobacco products (HTPs) have become a rapidly growing segment of the tobacco market in Serbia. This study examines the evolution of HTP prices, taxation, and relative market positioning in Serbia following their entry into the market.Methods: A secondary data analysis was conducted using administrative and publicly available market data from Serbia. Monthly retail price and excise series covered Q3 2018 - Q1 2025, while aggregate tobacco sales data covered 2018-2023. Descriptive analysis was combined with first-difference panel regression models to estimate the pass-through effect, defined as the extent to which changes in HTP and cigarette excise taxes were reflected in HTP retail prices.Results: HTPs accounted for approximately 2.5% of estimated tobacco packs sold in 2019 and 6.25% in 2023. While HTP prices moved closer to the medium cigarette segment, real HTP prices in 2023-2024 were lower than in 2018 and the excise burden on HTPs remained much lower than on cigarettes. The excise share of the leading HTP brand reached 13.4% in 2024, compared with 61.4% for the leading cigarette brand. The estimated direct pass-through coefficient for HTP excise changes was 0.26 (95% CI: -0.07-0.59). The point estimate was below full pass-through, but the confidence interval included zero. By contrast, cigarette excise changes were positively associated with HTP price changes (0.99; 95% CI: 0.61-1.36).Conclusions: In Serbia, HTP market expansion has taken place under a tax regime in which the effective tax burden on HTPs remains substantially lower than that on cigarettes. The estimated pass-through effects suggest that the industry may have absorbed part of recent HTP excise increases, although this finding should be interpreted cautiously given the observational design of the study and limited identifying variation. Overall, the results point to the relevance of considering closer alignment between HTP and cigarette taxation within tobacco tax policy.","PeriodicalId":23202,"journal":{"name":"Tobacco Induced Diseases","volume":"24 ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.4000,"publicationDate":"2026-10-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13640022/pdf/","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Tobacco Induced Diseases","FirstCategoryId":"3","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.18332/tid/231126","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"2026/1/1 0:00:00","PubModel":"eCollection","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"PUBLIC, ENVIRONMENTAL & OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH","Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Abstract

Introduction: Heated tobacco products (HTPs) have become a rapidly growing segment of the tobacco market in Serbia. This study examines the evolution of HTP prices, taxation, and relative market positioning in Serbia following their entry into the market.

Methods: A secondary data analysis was conducted using administrative and publicly available market data from Serbia. Monthly retail price and excise series covered Q3 2018 - Q1 2025, while aggregate tobacco sales data covered 2018-2023. Descriptive analysis was combined with first-difference panel regression models to estimate the pass-through effect, defined as the extent to which changes in HTP and cigarette excise taxes were reflected in HTP retail prices.

Results: HTPs accounted for approximately 2.5% of estimated tobacco packs sold in 2019 and 6.25% in 2023. While HTP prices moved closer to the medium cigarette segment, real HTP prices in 2023-2024 were lower than in 2018 and the excise burden on HTPs remained much lower than on cigarettes. The excise share of the leading HTP brand reached 13.4% in 2024, compared with 61.4% for the leading cigarette brand. The estimated direct pass-through coefficient for HTP excise changes was 0.26 (95% CI: -0.07-0.59). The point estimate was below full pass-through, but the confidence interval included zero. By contrast, cigarette excise changes were positively associated with HTP price changes (0.99; 95% CI: 0.61-1.36).

Conclusions: In Serbia, HTP market expansion has taken place under a tax regime in which the effective tax burden on HTPs remains substantially lower than that on cigarettes. The estimated pass-through effects suggest that the industry may have absorbed part of recent HTP excise increases, although this finding should be interpreted cautiously given the observational design of the study and limited identifying variation. Overall, the results point to the relevance of considering closer alignment between HTP and cigarette taxation within tobacco tax policy.

查看原文

微信好友朋友圈 QQ好友复制链接

本刊更多论文

塞尔维亚加热烟草制品：税收差异、相对价格和消费税传递。

导言：加热烟草制品（htp）已成为塞尔维亚烟草市场快速增长的一部分。本研究考察了塞尔维亚进入市场后HTP价格、税收和相对市场定位的演变。方法：利用塞尔维亚的行政和公开市场数据进行二次数据分析。月度零售价格和消费税系列涵盖2018年第三季度至2025年第一季度，而烟草总销售数据涵盖2018年至2023年。描述性分析与第一差异面板回归模型相结合，以估计传递效应，定义为HTP和卷烟消费税的变化在多大程度上反映在HTP零售价格中。结果：htp约占2019年估计销售烟草包的2.5%，2023年为6.25%。虽然HTP价格向中等卷烟市场靠拢，但2023-2024年的实际HTP价格低于2018年，HTP的消费税负担仍远低于卷烟。2024年，领先的HTP品牌的消费税份额达到13.4%，而领先的卷烟品牌为61.4%。估计HTP附加变化的直接传递系数为0.26 （95% CI: -0.07-0.59）。点估计低于完全传递，但置信区间包括零。相比之下，卷烟消费税变化与HTP价格变化呈正相关（0.99;95% CI: 0.61-1.36）。结论：在塞尔维亚，HTP市场扩张是在一种税收制度下进行的，在这种税制下，HTP的有效税收负担仍然大大低于卷烟。估计的传递效应表明，该行业可能已经吸收了最近HTP税收增加的一部分，尽管考虑到研究的观察设计和有限的识别变化，这一发现应该谨慎解释。总体而言，研究结果表明，在烟草税政策中考虑更密切地协调烟草税和卷烟税之间的关系。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

求助全文

约1分钟内获得全文去求助

来源期刊

Tobacco Induced Diseases SUBSTANCE ABUSE-PUBLIC, ENVIRONMENTAL & OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH

CiteScore

5.30

自引率

5.40%

发文量

审稿时长

12 weeks

期刊介绍： Tobacco Induced Diseases encompasses all aspects of research related to the prevention and control of tobacco use at a global level. Preventing diseases attributable to tobacco is only one aspect of the journal, whose overall scope is to provide a forum for the publication of research articles that can contribute to reducing the burden of tobacco induced diseases globally. To address this epidemic we believe that there must be an avenue for the publication of research/policy activities on tobacco control initiatives that may be very important at a regional and national level. This approach provides a very important "hands on" service to the tobacco control community at a global scale - as common problems have common solutions. Hence, we see ourselves as "connectors" within this global community. The journal hence encourages the submission of articles from all medical, biological and psychosocial disciplines, ranging from medical and dental clinicians, through health professionals to basic biomedical and clinical scientists.