Do Consumers Exploit Commitment Opportunities? Evidence from Natural Experiments Involving Liquor Consumption Academic Article uri icon

abstract

  • This paper provides evidence concerning the extent to which consumers of liquor employ commitment devices. One widely recommended commitment strategy is to regulate alcohol consumption by deliberately manipulating availability. The paper assesses the prevalence of the availability strategy by evaluating the effects of policies that would influence its effectivenessspecifically, changes in allowable Sunday sales hours. It finds that consumers increase their liquor consumption in response to extended Sunday on-premises sales hours, but not in response to extended off-premises sales hours. The latter finding is inconsistent with widespread use of the availability strategy. (JEL D12, H75, K39, L66)

published proceedings

  • AMERICAN ECONOMIC JOURNAL-ECONOMIC POLICY

altmetric score

  • 12.074

author list (cited authors)

  • Bernheim, B. D., Meer, J., & Novarro, N. K.

citation count

  • 16

complete list of authors

  • Bernheim, B Douglas||Meer, Jonathan||Novarro, Neva K

publication date

  • January 2016