Data and Code for: The Long-Run Effects of a Public Policy on Alcohol Tastes and Mortality

Principal Investigator(s): View help for Principal Investigator(s) Lorenz Kueng, Università della Svizzera Italiana (USI); Evgeny Yakovlev, New Economic School

Version: View help for Version V1

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Code			03/26/2020 06:41:PM
Data			03/26/2020 06:35:PM
AEJPol-2018-0439_readme.pdf	application/pdf	235.6 KB	03/26/2020 02:34:PM

Project Citation:

Kueng, Lorenz, and Yakovlev, Evgeny. Data and Code for: The Long-Run Effects of a Public Policy on Alcohol Tastes and Mortality. Nashville, TN: American Economic Association [publisher], 2023. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2023-01-27. https://doi.org/10.3886/E117443V1

Project Description

Summary: 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.

Funding Sources: Russian Science Foundation (18-18-00466)

Scope of Project

Subject Terms: long-run policy effects; tastes; mortality; program evaluation

JEL Classification:
      D12 Consumer Economics: Empirical Analysis
      H31 Fiscal Policies and Behavior of Economic Agents: Household
      I18 Health: Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health
      J18 Demographic Economics: Public Policy

Geographic Coverage: Russia

Time Period(s): 1970 – 2011

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Published Versions

V1 [2023-01-27]

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