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Handbook of Labor, Human Resources and Population Economics pp 1–18Cite as

Light, Moderate, and Heavy Drinking

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Abstract

Most countries around the world regulate alcohol in some form or another. Taxation is a popular form of regulation, but governments use many different approaches including prohibiting sales to minors, minimum purchase prices, and restrictions on days and hours of sales. Knowing how these policies affect the demand for alcohol is necessary for setting optimal policies. A common feature of most of the existing studies on alcohol policies is that they evaluate the effectiveness of the policy at the mean level of consumption. However, setting alcohol taxes or other regulations based on mean consumption may not produce desirable results given that low levels of consumption have different health and consumer utility considerations than higher levels. The purpose of this chapter is to review the literature on price and non-price alcohol regulations, evaluated at different levels of drinking.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Economics, Emory University and NBER, Atlanta, GA, USA

    Sara Markowitz

  2. Department of Economics, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, USA

    Cheng Ding

Authors
  1. Sara Markowitz
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  2. Cheng Ding
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Correspondence to Sara Markowitz .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. UNU-MERIT & Princeton University, Maastricht, The Netherlands

    Klaus F. Zimmermann

Section Editor information

  1. Department of Public Administration and Policy Department of Public Administration and Policy, American University, Washington, DC, USA

    Dave Marcotte

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Markowitz, S., Ding, C. (2020). Light, Moderate, and Heavy Drinking. In: Zimmermann, K. (eds) Handbook of Labor, Human Resources and Population Economics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57365-6_137-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57365-6_137-1

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  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-57365-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-57365-6

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