Tonight: Gillespie on Booze on TV

I'll be appearing on CNBC's On the Money tonight (sometime between 7:30PM and 8:00PM ET) to discuss the excellent and provocative Reason Foundation study No Booze? You May Lose, which finds the drinkers make more money than abstainers.

And I taped a commentary on the same topic for the NPR show Marketplace. That will air at different times around the country, depending on your local affiliates. For more info, go here.

Earlier today, Jacob Sullum linked to some nice writeups of the study, which will hopefully force a reevaluation of restrictive alcohol policies that serve little or no purpose.

Comments

[Jeff Smith]

Now, it could also be that individuals who earn more spend more on drinking because alcohol is a normal good whose consumption increases with income.

The econometric strategy of simply conditioning on a handful of covariates is not as satisfying as one might wish for two reasons. First of all, the set of covariates do not plausibly make "all else equal" as they do not include important variables likely to be relevant here such as ability, time preference and self-control. Second, the covariates include variables such as marital status that likely both affect and are affected by alcohol consumption, which makes their inclusion problematic.

A more statisfying strategy would use exogenous variation in drinking due to, say, state level differences in liquor taxes and access restrictions such as state liquor stores. In the lingo, this would mean using these latter variables as instruments.

At the same time, conditional on methods, the study is well documented and does a good job of citing the literature. And it will stir the pot, which is always a good thing.

Jeff

[Paul]

Hmph, must he all the other drinkers. Cause this drinker? Not that much money.

[randomly selected skid row win]

I'll drink to that!