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Working Papers
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Binge Drinking, Alcohol Prices, and Alcohol Taxes: A Systematic Review of Results for Youth, Young Adults, and Adults from Economic Studies, Natural Experiments, and Field Studies

Working Paper No. 146

Published: 2014
Category:
Economics

Binge Drinking, Alcohol Prices, and Alcohol Taxes: A Systematic Review of Results for Youth, Young Adults, and Adults from Economic Studies, Natural Experiments, and Field Studies

Jon P. Nelson
Full Text PDF
Abstract
Heavy episodic (“binge”) drinking of alcohol has serious public health implications, especially for youth and young adults. However, previous reviews have failed to address in a comprehensive manner the effects of alcohol prices and taxes on binge drinking by gender and age group. Methods: A systematic review is performed for possible effects of alcohol prices and taxes on binge drinking for three age groups. Outcomes examined include binge participation, intensity and frequency. Fifty-six relevant economic studies were recovered, with results distributed equally among three age groups. Also recovered were five natural experiments for tax reductions and six field studies, which increased the country coverage. Criteria for inclusion/exclusion and potential sources of bias are discussed, including adequacy of price and tax data. Price-binge relationships are judged using a 95% confidence interval (p ≤ 0.05) for statistical significance. Results: More than half of economic studies report insignificant results for prices or taxes (30 null of 56 studies), with mixed results in 13 studies and significant results in only 13 studies. Null results are equally distributed across age groups, but some mixed results reflect different outcomes by gender. Prices or taxes are insignificant for 11 of 16 samples for men and 7 of 14 samples for women. Four of five natural experiments report null results for country-level tax cuts. Six field studies examine a variety of pricing methods and drink specials, but results are mixed. Conclusions: A large body of evidence now indicates that binge drinkers are not highly-responsive to increased prices or taxes, and may not respond at all. Non- responsiveness holds generally for younger and older drinkers and for male and female binge drinkers alike. Increased alcohol prices or taxes are unlikely to be effective as a means to reduce binge drinking, regardless of gender or age group.

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Please send your papers as PDF files to the editor, Victor Ginsburgh, at vginsbur@ulb.ac.be
Papers will be quickly reviewed, prior to potential posting on the website. Decision will be to post or not, possibly with short comments, but without referee reports. The decision will be based primarily on the suitability of the paper’s topic to the aims of the Association.
Such decisions are independent of publication decisions for the Journal of Wine Economics.

Working Paper publication requires that at least one author
is a regular member of AAWE.

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