Convergence in National Alcohol Consumption Patterns: New Global Indicators

Kym Anderson and Alexander Holmes

No 12110, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: With increasing globalisation and interactions between cultures, countries are converging in many ways, including in their consumption patterns. The extent to which this has been the case in alcohol consumption has been the subject of previous studies, but those studies have been limited in scope to a specific region or group of high-income countries or to just one or two types of alcohol. The present study updates earlier findings, covers all countries of the world since 1961, introduces two new summary indicators to capture additional dimensions of the extent of convergence in total alcohol consumption and in its mix of beverages, and distinguishes countries according to whether their alcoholic focus was on wine, beer or spirits in the early 1960s as well as to their geographic region and their real per capita income. Also, for recent years we add expenditure data and compare alcohol with soft drink retail expenditure, and we show what difference it makes when unrecorded alcohol volumes are included as part of total alcohol consumption. The final section summarizes the findings and suggests further research could provide new demand elasticity estimates and use econometrics to explain the varying extents of convergence over time, space and beverage type.

Keywords: Globalization of preferences; National beverage consumption mix; Beverage consumption intensity index; Alcohol consumption mix similarity index (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D12 L66 N10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr and nep-hea
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (32)

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Journal Article: Convergence in National Alcohol Consumption Patterns: New Global Indicators* (2017)
Working Paper: Convergence in National Alcohol Consumption Patterns: New Global Indicators (2017)
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