This is the season of excessive libation, and since I am on holiday in the Coorg and the only thing funnier than an inebriated economist is a sober one, I thought I'd see how our gang had assaulted alcohol. As might be expected, it is the Americans, with their publish-and-perish approach to intellect, who have taken the lead.
As always the NBER site, which is where one should go for a nice laugh when one is feeling suicidal, came to the rescue. I found several attempts by economists at taking revenge on alcohol.
The papers are listed below, and just in case while waiting for your next drink, you are wondering how to show off, I am giving you some talking points. You can use them after ascertaining who you are talking to.
The first one listed below says "perhaps the most important contribution by economists has been the repeated demonstration that there is nothing unusual about alcohol in at least one essential respect: consumers drink less ethanol (and have fewer alcohol-related problems) when alcohol-beverage prices are increased."
The second is about the effects of advertising and concludes not just that "blacks participate in alcohol less than whites and their participation cannot be explained with the included variables as well as it can for whites", but also that "price and advertising effects are generally larger for females."
The third one is about binge drinking by kids on labour market outcomes a decade later. There is good news for females. For them, "adolescent drinking and adult wages are unrelated, and negative employment effects disappear once academic achievement is held constant."
But for males, the poor sods, "negative employment effects and, more strikingly, positive wage effects persistÂ…." The authors think "that binge drinking conveys unobserved social skills that are rewarded by employers."
The fourth one is truly fantastic. It explores the possibility "that a reduction in per capita drinking will result in some people drinking 'too little' and dying sooner than they otherwise would." So the authors did the usual things with data and conclude that "the long-term mortality effect of a one per cent reduction in drinking is essentially nil."
The fifth one is about alcohol and violence and says that "results from the preferred specifications indicate that higher beer taxes lead to a lower incidence of assault, but not rape or robbery."
The sixth paper is even more esoteric. It looks at the "relationship between alcohol policies (for instance, beer taxes and statutes pertaining to alcohol sales and drunk driving) and rates of gonorrhea and AIDS among teenagers and young adults." The conclusion: higher beer taxes lead to lower rates of gonorrhea for males.
The seventh paper examines the link between drinking and domestic violence, and concludes that "increasing the tax on beer can be an effective policy tool in reducing violence."
Paper number eight investigates the effect on inebriation on sexual activity. (Relax, this paper is not about what you think, and you can drink on regardless). The authors say that, among teenagers and young adults, alcohol use appears to have no causal influence in determining whether or not they have sex. "However, alcohol use may lower contraception use among sexually active."
My son wants to become an economist. I wonder if he has a future.