Eric Crampton • Feb 04, 2014 •
If you want to reduce binge drinking, excise tax rates are a remarkably blunt instrument. We don't use petrol taxes to curb drag racing; we shouldn't think that alcohol excise is a great solution to binge drinking.I'd posted last year on a nice Australian study by Byrnes et al who found that tax increases did a lot to curb … Read More
Eric Crampton • Jul 29, 2013 •
Where the social harms from alcohol consumption are nonlinear and excise is constrained to be linear, any excise tax will wind up being a pretty blunt way of trying to internalise harms. An excise tax that raises revenue sufficient to cover the total social cost imposed will necessarily overtax light and moderate drinkers while undertaxing those imposing larger social harms, … Read More
Eric Crampton • Apr 09, 2013 •
Gorbachev's crackdown on alcoholism reduced heavy drinking in the former Soviet Union. He combined some measures directly targeting heavy drinkers with price increases and supply reductions. Bhattacharya and coauthors wrote: The results suggest little evidence that our summary measure of campaign intensity operates either through differential supply shifts or through differential price increases. However, we are hesitant to draw conclusions … Read More