The Long-Run Effects of a Public Policy on Alcohol Tastes and Mortality

Lorenz Kueng and Evgeny Yakovlev

No 20298, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We study the long-run effects of Russia's anti-alcohol campaign, which dramatically altered the relative supply of hard and light alcohol in the late 1980s. We find that this policy shifted young men's long-run preferences from hard to light alcohol decades later and we estimate the age at which consumers form their tastes. We show that the large beer market expansion in the late 1990s had similar effects on young consumers' tastes, while older consumers' tastes remained largely unchanged. We then link these long-run changes in alcohol consumption patterns to changes in male mortality. The shift from hard to light alcohol reduced incidences of binge drinking substantially, leading to fewer alcohol- related deaths. We conclude that the resulting large cohort differences in current alcohol consumption shares explain a significant part of the recent decrease in male mortality. Simulations suggest that mortality will continue to decrease by another 23% over the next twenty years due to persistent changes in consumer tastes. Program impact evaluations that focus only on contemporaneous effects can therefore severely underestimate the total effect of such public policies that change preferences for goods.

JEL-codes: D12 E21 G02 I10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cis, nep-mac and nep-tra
Note: AG AP EFG EH PE
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Published as Lorenz Kueng & Evgeny Yakovlev, 2021. "The Long-Run Effects of a Public Policy on Alcohol Tastes and Mortality," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 13(1), pages 294-328, February.

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Journal Article: The Long-Run Effects of a Public Policy on Alcohol Tastes and Mortality (2021)
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