IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fth/bostin/0078.html

The Effects of Alcohol Prohibition on Alcohol Consumption

Author

Listed:
  • Jeffrey A. Miron

Abstract

This paper examines the impact of Prohibition on alcohol consumption. Since data on both the price and quantity of alcohol are unavailable during the Prohibition period, it is not possible to estimate Prohibition's impact on either the supply or demand for alcohol. Assuming the existence of a reasonable proxy for alcohol consumption, however, it is possible to estimate the net impact of Prohibition on the equilibrium quantity of alcohol consumed. I estimate this effect under a range of assumptions about the nature of preferences, taking into account other possible determinants of alcohol consumption and the proxy series. The overall conclusion of the paper is that Prohibition exerted a modest and possibly even a positive effect on alcohol consumption. One possible interpretation of the results is that the demand for alcohol is relatively inelastic, although many earlier studies find substantial elasticity in the demand for alcohol. Another possible interpretation is that Prohibition created a forbidden fruit effect that increased preferences for alcohol, tending to offset the depressing effects of increased prices on demand. Still a third possibility is that Prohibition failed to raise alcohol prices substantially, perhaps because black markets suppliers face low marginal costs of evading government regulations and taxes. Existing data provide some support for this last possibility.
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Suggested Citation

  • Jeffrey A. Miron, 1997. "The Effects of Alcohol Prohibition on Alcohol Consumption," Papers 0078, Boston University - Industry Studies Programme.
    • Handle: RePEc:fth:bostin:0078
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a
    for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    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. Kenneth W. Clements & Xueyan Zhao, 2005. "Economic Aspects of Marijuana," Economics Discussion / Working Papers 05-28, The University of Western Australia, Department of Economics.
    2. Angela K. Dills, 2004. "Alcohol Prohibition and Cirrhosis," American Law and Economics Review, American Law and Economics Association, vol. 6(2), pages 285-318.
    3. Clements, Kenneth W., 2004. "Three facts about marijuana prices," Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society, vol. 48(2), pages 1-30.
    4. Kenneth W. Clements & Yihui Lan & Xueyan Zhao, 2005. "The Demand for Vice: Inter-Commodity Interactions with Uncertainty," Economics Discussion / Working Papers 05-30, The University of Western Australia, Department of Economics.
    5. Cook, Philip J. & Moore, Michael J., 2000. "Alcohol," Handbook of Health Economics, in: A. J. Culyer & J. P. Newhouse (ed.), Handbook of Health Economics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 30, pages 1629-1673, Elsevier.
    6. Abbink, Klaus & Dasgupta, Utteeyo & Gangadharan, Lata & Jain, Tarun, 2014. "Letting the briber go free: An experiment on mitigating harassment bribes," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 111(C), pages 17-28.
    7. Cook, Philip J. & Moore, Michael J., 1999. "Alcohol," Working Papers 156, The University of Chicago Booth School of Business, George J. Stigler Center for the Study of the Economy and the State.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • I1 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health
    • J1 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics

    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:fth:bostin:0078. 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: Thomas Krichel (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ispbuus.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.