Further evidence about alcohol consumption and the business cycle

C. Vilaplana, Jose Labeaga and Sergi Jimenez-Martin

No 2006-06, Working Papers from FEDEA

Abstract: The main goal of this paper is to test whether macroeconomic conditions affect alcohol consumption using data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System for the period 1987-2003. We try to control unobserved heterogeneity by relying on the construction of pseudo-panel data from the different cross-sections available. Our results indicate that when we do not take into account unobserved heterogeneity, the unemployment rate is signifficant and reduces the probability of becoming drinker and the number of alcoholic beverages consumed. However, once we estimate the model using cohort data, controlling for both observed and unobserved heterogeneity, the unemployment rate becomes non-signifficant. This implies that unobserved effects are important when explaining alcohol consumption. As a result, inferences obtained without controlling for them should be interpreted with caution.

Date: 2006-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea and nep-mac
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://documentos.fedea.net/pubs/dt/2006/dt-2006-06.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fda:fdaddt:2006-06

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from FEDEA
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Carmen Arias ().