Soye SHIN
“Every day, millions of people make food choices that harm their health — not because they lack willpower, but because the environments surrounding them make unhealthy eating the path of least resistance. Obesity, poor diet quality, and diet-related chronic diseases are not failures of individual self-control; they are the predictable consequences of food systems that were never designed with health in mind.”
Dr. Shin is a behavioral and applied economist whose work interrogates this premise. Drawing on economic theory, causal inference methods, and behavioral science, she studies how food environments — from nutrition labels and pricing policies to the architecture of food choice interfaces — shape what people eat and, ultimately, their long-term health. A core conviction underpins her research agenda: interventions that target individual willpower alone will always fall short. Lasting improvements in population health require policies that reshape the environments in which choices are made.
At the Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health, her work focuses on evaluating Singapore’s front-of-pack nutrition labelling policies, understanding the dietary challenges facing low-income families, and building an evidence base for food policy and environment that are equitable, effective, and environmentally sustainable.
Affiliation
- NUS Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health
Research Areas
- Food Policy and Diet Quality
- Price and Demand Analysis
- Preventive and Population Health
- Environmental Health
Teaching Areas
- Econometrics
- Health Economics
Academic/Professional Qualifications
- Ph.D. University of Georgia. 2019
Career History
- Assistant Professor, Duke-NUS Medical School
Professional/Consulting Activities
- Research Scientist, Health Services Research, Eastern General Hospital
Selected Publications
- Shin, S. “Product Heterogeneity, Price Index Bias, and Their Link to Provincial Urban Size: Evidence from Urban China’s Beverage Marekt”. Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics, forthcoming
- Shin, S., and Tan, Y., 2026. “Evaluating the Impact of Singapore’s Nutri-Grade Beverage Labels on Prepackaged Beverage Purchases and Product Nutrient Composition: A Before-After Study, 2019-2024”. American Journal of Public Health.
- Shin, S., Alqunaibet, A.M., Alsukait, R., Alruwaily, A., Cetinkaya,V., Herbst H. C., and Finkelstein, E. 2026. “A Randomized Online Grocery Store Trial to Test a Salient Tiered Food and Beverage Tax in Saudi Arabia”. Value In Health Regional Issues, Volume 52,101516
- Shin, S., Xiaoxi, Y., Chakraborty, B., and Finkelstein, E. 2025. “A Randomized Trial using an Online Grocery Store to Evaluate a Multicomponent Digital Intervention to Improve Diet Quality”, American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 107622
- Shin, S., Gandhi, M., Puri, J., Finkelstein, E.A. 2024. “Influencing the Nutritional Quality of Grocery Purchases: A Randomized Trial to Evaluate the Impact of a Social Norm-Based Behavioral Intervention with and without a Loss-Framed Financial Incentive”, Food Policy, Volume 125, 2024,102646
- Shin, S., Magnan. N., Mullally, C., and Janzen, S. 2022. “Demand for Weather Index Insurance among Smallholder Farmers under Prospect Theory”, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, Vol.202, pp.82-104
- McCullough, E., Zhen, C., Shin, S., Lu, M., and Arsenault, J. 2022. “The Role of Food Preferences in Determining Diet Quality for Tanzanian Consumers”, Journal of Development Economics, 155, 102789