TY  - JOUR
AU  - Carpenter, Christopher
AU  - Dobkin, Carlos
TI  - Alcohol Regulation and Crime
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 15828
PY  - 2010
Y2  - March 2010
DO  - 10.3386/w15828
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w15828
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w15828.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Christopher Carpenter
Department of Economics
Vanderbilt University
VU Station B, Box #351819
2301 Vanderbilt Place
Nashville, TN 37235
E-Mail: christopher.s.carpenter@vanderbilt.edu

Carlos Dobkin
Department of Economics
University of California, Santa Cruz
1156 High Street
Santa Cruz, CA 95064
Tel: 831/459-2079
Fax: 831/459-5077
E-Mail: cdobkin@ucsc.edu
M1  - published as Christopher Carpenter, Carlos Dobkin. "Alcohol Regulation and Crime," in Philip Cook, Jens Ludwig, Justin McCrary, editors, "Controlling Crime: Strategies and Tradeoffs" University of Chicago Press (2011)

AB  - We provide a critical review of research in economics that has examined causal relationships between alcohol use and crime.  We lay out several causal pathways through which alcohol regulation and alcohol consumption may affect crime, including: direct pharmacological effects on aggression, reaction time, and motor impairment; excuse motivations; venues and social interactions; and victimization risk.  We focus our review on four main types of alcohol regulations: price/tax restrictions, age-based availability restrictions, spatial availability restrictions, and temporal availability restrictions.  We conclude that there is strong evidence that tax- and age-based restrictions on alcohol availability reduce crime, and we discuss implications for policy and practice.
ER  -