Evaluating Economic Justifications for Alcohol Restrictions

Edward Stringham and Ilkay Pulan

American Journal of Economics and Sociology, 2006, vol. 65, issue 4, 971-990

Abstract: Abstract. Does economics justify restricting alcohol consumption? A new line of research concludes that alcohol involves significant social costs and that various restrictions would lead to net social gains. This article focuses on Levy and Miller (1995), who conduct a cost‐benefit analysis of serving‐intoxicated‐patron laws. We administer a survey of taverns in Washtenaw County, Michigan, to investigate the plausibility of some of Levy and Miller’s claims. We find a number of problems with their economic discussion: in addition to a number of problematic assumptions, they count private costs as social costs and completely ignore consumer and producer surplus associated with alcohol. We find their assumptions bias the results in favor of the restrictions. Despite their popularity in public policy debates, these economic justifications for restricting alcohol are dubious.

Date: 2006
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1536-7150.2006.00485.x

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:bla:ajecsc:v:65:y:2006:i:4:p:971-990

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0002-9246

Access Statistics for this article

American Journal of Economics and Sociology is currently edited by Laurence S. Moss

More articles in American Journal of Economics and Sociology from Wiley Blackwell
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().