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Alcohol consumption and individual time preferences of Russians

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Abstract

This paper explores the relationship between socioeconomic factors—particularly, the rate of time preferences and alcohol consumption in Russia. The rate of time preferences shows an individual’s willingness to delay the utility from consumption to future periods of time. The relationship between this rate and indicators of alcohol consumption is examined separately for men and women. We find significant differences in men’s and women’s patterns of consumption of alcohol. Our findings suggest that the rate of time preferences, along with age, educational level, income, place of residence, and health substantially, affects an individual’s decision to drink alcohol. We show that employment status is endogenous to alcohol consumption and that estimating a system of binary equations is necessary.

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Notes

  1. Here we follow the statement of Wilde (2000), “In recursive multiple equation probit models with endogenous dummy regressors no exclusion restrictions for the exogenous variables are needed if there is sufficient variation in the data. The last condition is ensured by the assumption that each equation contains at least one varying exogenous regressor”.

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Acknowledgments

This article is an output of a research project implemented as part of the Basic Research Program at the National Research University Higher School of Economics.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia

    Tatiana Kossova, Elena Kossova & Maria Sheluntcova

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  1. Tatiana Kossova
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  2. Elena Kossova
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  3. Maria Sheluntcova
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Correspondence to Maria Sheluntcova.

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Appendices

Appendix 1

See Table 5.

Appendix 2

See Table 6.

Table 6 Variable definitions, summary statistics, and descriptions of regressors in equations
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Appendix 3

See Tables 7, 8, 9 and 10.

Table 7 Multivariate probit for male respondents with indicators «Drink_strong» and «Drink_beer» (long)
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Table 8 Multivariate probit for male respondents with indicators «Drink_strong» and «Drink_beer» (short)
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Table 9 Multivariate probit for male and female respondents with indicator «Drink» (long)
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Table 10 Multivariate probit for male and female respondents with indicator « Drink » (short)
Full size table

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Kossova, T., Kossova, E. & Sheluntcova, M. Alcohol consumption and individual time preferences of Russians. Int Rev Econ 64, 47–85 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12232-016-0262-3

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