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Die Preise alkoholischer Getränke sind in den vergangenen 40 Jahren in Deutschland relativ zum allgemeinen Preisniveau um rund 30% billiger geworden. Im europäischen Vergleich weist Deutschland besonders niedrige Steuersätze auf Alkohol auf. Michael Adams und Tobias Effertz, Universität Hamburg, berechnen die volkswirtschaftlichen Kosten der alkoholbedingten Krankheiten und Todesfälle und schlagen eine deutliche Erhöhung der Steuern auf alkoholische Getränke vor. Höhere Steuern wären mit einem deutlichen Rückgang des Alkoholkonsums vor allem bei Kindern und Jugendlichen verbunden. Zugleich stiege das bisher sehr geringe Steueraufkommen auf alkoholische Getränke deutlich an und ermögliche eine Verminderung der Steuerlast an anderer Stelle. Hierdurch ergäbe sich eine volkswirtschaftlich bessere Steuerstruktur.

Background: This paper contributes to the evidence-base on prices and alcohol use by presenting meta-analytic summaries of price and income elasticities for alcohol beverages. The analysis improves on previous meta-analyses by correcting for outliers and publication bias. Methods: Adjusting for outliers is important to avoid assigning too much weight to studies with very small standard errors or large effect sizes. Trimmed samples are used for this purpose. Correcting for publication bias is important to avoid giving too much weight to studies that reflect selection by investigators or others involved with publication processes. Cumulative meta-analysis is proposed as a method to avoid or reduce publication bias, resulting in more robust estimates. The literature search obtained 182 primary studies for aggregate alcohol consumption, which exceeds the database used in previous reviews and meta-analyses. Results: For individual beverages, corrected price elasticities are smaller (less elastic) by 28-29 percent compared with consensus averages frequently used for alcohol beverages. The average price and income elasticities are: beer, -0.30 and 0.50; wine, -0.45 and 1.00; and spirits, -0.55 and 1.00. For total alcohol, the price elasticity is -0.50 and the income elasticity is 0.60. Conclusions: These new results imply that attempts to reduce alcohol consumption through price or tax increases will be less effective or more costly than previously claimed.

Jevsnik Birgit, Klagenfurt, Alpen-Adria-Univ., Dipl.-Arb., 2011

The aim of this paper is to provide a reliable set of income, own-price, and cross-price elasticities of demand for the consumer goods, foods and alcohol beverages based on Almost Ideal Demand System model applied to the most relevant Czech data set of Household Budget Statistics. While we concentrate on the last stage of our complete demand system which is concerned with the demand for beverages, the estimates obtained in the first (all consumption goods) and second (food) stages of our model may be used for consumer demand analysis with respect to any consumption group considered in our model.

While many studies have documented deviations from the Law of One Price in international settings, evidence is scarce on the extent to which consumers take advantage of price differentials and engage in cross border shopping. We use data from 287 Swedish municipalities to estimate how responsive alcohol sales are to foreign prices, and relate the sensitivity to the location's distance to the border. Typical results suggest that the elasticity with respect to the foreign price is around 0.4 in the border region; moving 200 (400) kilometers inland reduces it to 0.2 (0.1). Given that cross country price differences for alcohol and other products are often caused by taxes, our evidence has implications for the debate on tax competition/harmonization.