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Economic and Social Implications of Regulating Alcohol Availability in Grocery Stores
Author(s) -
Rickard Bradley J.,
Costanigro Marco,
Garg Teevrat
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
applied economic perspectives and policy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.4
H-Index - 49
eISSN - 2040-5804
pISSN - 2040-5790
DOI - 10.1093/aepp/ppt018
Subject(s) - wine , legislature , distribution (mathematics) , business , grocery store , economics , public economics , marketing , food science , political science , mathematical analysis , chemistry , mathematics , law
The availability of alcoholic beverages in grocery stores varies across the United States due to state‐level regulations. Recently there have been a number of controversial legislative proposals to expand the distribution of certain alcoholic beverages, most notably wine. Our econometric results show that, holding constant the total quantity of alcohol consumed, a higher share of wine correlates with lower traffic fatality rates, while the opposite is true for beer. These findings suggest that arguments against the wider distribution of wine as an approach to reduce social problems may not be fully justified.