Economic and Social Implications of Regulating Alcohol Availability in Grocery Stores

The availability of alcoholic beverages in grocery stores varies across the United States due to state-level regulations. Recently there have been a number of controversial legislative proposals to expand the distribution of certain alcoholic beverages, most notably wine. Our econometric results show that, holding constant the total quantity of alcohol consumed, a higher share of wine correlates with lower traffic fatality rates, while the opposite is true for beer. These findings suggest that arguments against the wider distribution of wine as an approach to reduce social problems may not be fully justified.