IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ecl/ohidic/2017-06.html

Impulsive Consumption and Financial Wellbeing: Evidence from an Increase in the Availability of Alcohol

Author

Listed:
  • Ben-David, Itzhak

    (Ohio State University)

  • Bos, Marieke

    (Swedish House of Finance)

Abstract

Increased availability of temptation goods might harm individuals if they have time-inconsistent preferences and consume more in the present than planned before. We study this idea by examining the credit behavior of low-income households around the expansion of the opening hours of retail liquor stores during a nationwide experiment in Sweden. Consistent with store closures serving as commitment devices, expanded operating hours led to higher alcohol consumption (Nordstrom and Skog 2003) and greater consumer credit uptake and default. Thus, our results show that limiting the availability of temptation goods can improve the financial wellbeing of individuals with inconsistent-time preferences.

Suggested Citation

  • Ben-David, Itzhak & Bos, Marieke, 2017. "Impulsive Consumption and Financial Wellbeing: Evidence from an Increase in the Availability of Alcohol," Working Paper Series 2017-06, Ohio State University, Charles A. Dice Center for Research in Financial Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:ecl:ohidic:2017-06
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID2921237_code1542588.pdf?abstractid=2921237&mirid=1
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Frank Schilbach, 2019. "Alcohol and Self-Control: A Field Experiment in India," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 109(4), pages 1290-1322, April.
    2. Rawley Heimer & Zwetelina Iliewa & Alex Imas & Martin Weber, 2025. "Dynamic Inconsistency in Risky Choice: Evidence from the Lab and Field," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 115(1), pages 330-363, January.
    3. Brian Baugh & Itzhak Ben-David & Hoonsuk Park & Jonathan A. Parker, 2021. "Asymmetric Consumption Smoothing," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 111(1), pages 192-230, January.
    4. Uhr, Charline & Meyer, Steffen & Hackethal, Andreas, 2021. "Smoking hot portfolios? Trading behavior, investment biases, and self-control failure," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 63(C), pages 73-95.
    5. Hyungsuk Byun & Barry Scholnick, 2017. "Spatial Commitment Devices and Addictive Goods: Evidence from the Removal of Slot Machines from Bars," Working Papers 17-34, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D03 - Microeconomics - - General - - - Behavioral Microeconomics: Underlying Principles
    • D12 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Consumer Economics: Empirical Analysis
    • I18 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health
    • L51 - Industrial Organization - - Regulation and Industrial Policy - - - Economics of Regulation
    • L66 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Manufacturing - - - Food; Beverages; Cosmetics; Tobacco

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ecl:ohidic:2017-06. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cdohsus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.