County-Level Alcohol Availability and Cirrhosis Mortality

The paper examines the impact of county-level alcohol availability on heavy drinking, as measured by liver cirrhosis mortality, employing data on the 254 Texas counties. In particular, reducing the number of licensed alcohol vendors raises the travel-cost component of the price of alcohol and, therefore, should lower the rate of cirrhosis mortality. Since the observed level of alcohol availability in a county is endogenous to the interaction of alcohol demand and supply, we follow a two-stage estimation method. The results show a strong positive relationship between cirrhosis mortality and alcohol availability: counties with a higher degree of alcohol availability tend to have more deaths from cirrhosis. Therefore, reducing alcohol availability, as measured by the number of licensed alcohol vendors, can be an important policy tool in reducing heavy drinking.