The Long-Run Effects of a Public Policy on Alcohol Tastes and Mortality

80 Pages Posted: 24 Jul 2014 Last revised: 19 Jun 2022

See all articles by Lorenz Kueng

Lorenz Kueng

Swiss Finance Institute; University of Lugano - Faculty of Economics; Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR)

Evgeny Yakovlev

New Economic School; SciencesPo - Sciences Po - Department of Economics; IZA

Date Written: July 2014

Abstract

We study the long-run effects of Russia's anti-alcohol campaign, which dramatically altered the relative supply of hard and light alcohol in the late 1980s. We find that this policy shifted young men's long-run preferences from hard to light alcohol decades later and we estimate the age at which consumers form their tastes. We show that the large beer market expansion in the late 1990s had similar effects on young consumers' tastes, while older consumers' tastes remained largely unchanged. We then link these long-run changes in alcohol consumption patterns to changes in male mortality. The shift from hard to light alcohol reduced incidences of binge drinking substantially, leading to fewer alcohol- related deaths. We conclude that the resulting large cohort differences in current alcohol consumption shares explain a significant part of the recent decrease in male mortality. Simulations suggest that mortality will continue to decrease by another 23% over the next twenty years due to persistent changes in consumer tastes. Program impact evaluations that focus only on contemporaneous effects can therefore severely underestimate the total effect of such public policies that change preferences for goods.

Suggested Citation

Kueng, Lorenz and Yakovlev, Evgeny, The Long-Run Effects of a Public Policy on Alcohol Tastes and Mortality (July 2014). NBER Working Paper No. w20298, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2471191

Lorenz Kueng (Contact Author)

Swiss Finance Institute

c/o University of Geneva
40, Bd du Pont-d'Arve
CH-1211 Geneva 4
Switzerland

HOME PAGE: http://www.sfi.ch/en/

University of Lugano - Faculty of Economics

Via Giuseppe Buffi 13
Lugano, TI 6904
Switzerland

HOME PAGE: http://www.usi.ch/en

Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR)

London
United Kingdom

HOME PAGE: http://cepr.org/

Evgeny Yakovlev

New Economic School ( email )

Skolkovskoe shosse 45
Moscow, 121343
Russia

SciencesPo - Sciences Po - Department of Economics ( email )

28, rue des Saints-Pères
Paris, Paris 75007
France

IZA ( email )

P.O. Box 7240
Bonn, D-53072
Germany

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