Legal access to alcohol and its impact on drinking and crime

Fabian Dehos

No 884, Ruhr Economic Papers from RWI - Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-University Bochum, TU Dortmund University, University of Duisburg-Essen

Abstract: This paper leverages a discontinuity in legal access to alcohol at age 16 to estimate its impacts on teenage drinking and crime in Germany, a country with very high consumption levels. Using detailed survey data and administrative crime records from 2005 to 2015, I detect considerable increases in drinking participation, frequency, and intensity at the legal cutoff along the middle and lower end of the distribution. These increases coincide with discrete jumps in criminal engagement under the influence of alcohol, mostly due to violent and property crimes. I provide evidence that changes in drinking intensity induce these crimes, implying a drinking-crime elasticity of 0.4 at age 16.

Keywords: Alcohol; crime; minimum legal drinking age (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I12 I18 K42 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-law
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:rwirep:884

DOI: 10.4419/96973023

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