Working paper
The Effect Of Closing Hour Restrictions On Alcohol Use And Abuse In Russia
The material represents the fourth chapter of the monograph «Anti-SaM: What is «wrong» in the Textbooks of P. Samuelson, N. Mankiw…» (forthcoming by Infra-M Publ., Moscow). Accounts of several authoritative introductory textbooks are compared, the notions under consideration are: uncertainty, optimization, marginal items, interests. Proceeding from this basis, the author's classification of subjects’ objective interests is made; two fundamental principles of economic rationality – one of cost minimization and the other of benefit maximization, – are described, with their associations to the effects of substitution and income, correspondingly, taken into account. Realization of the economic sovereignty both at nomadic and at settled ways of living, either in the past epochs, and in the societies of modern type, is accentuated as well.
Objectives. We took advantage of a natural experiment to assess the impact on suicide mortality of a suite of Russian alcohol policies.
Methods. We used autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) interrupted time series techniques to model the effect of the alcohol policy (implemented in January 2006) on monthly male and female suicide counts between January 2000 and December 2010.
Results. Monthly male and female suicide counts declined during the period under study. While the ARIMA analysis showed no impact of the policy on female suicide mortality, the results revealed an immediate and permanent reduction of about 9% in male suicides (Ln ω0=-0.096, p=.01).
Conclusions. In spite of a recent decline in mortality, rates of alcohol consumption and suicide in Russia remain among the highest in the world. Our analysis revealed that the 2006 alcohol policy in Russia led to a 9% reduction in male suicide mortality, meaning the policy was responsible for saving 4000 male lives annually that would otherwise have been lost to suicide. Together with recent similar findings elsewhere, our results suggest an important role for public health interventions, including alcohol policy, in reducing alcohol-related harm.
The book is dedicated to alcohol state policies in the XVII – early XIX century.
The monograph considers in detail the issues of state-legal regulation of production and turnover of alcoholic and alcohol-containing products. The auther chronologically presents alcohol-related statutory and legal documentation, generated in Russia during two and a half centuries. The book specifies economic and social consequences of State regulation of the alcohol politicy issues. In the monograph some aspects of the modern legal regulation of production, storage, transportation, wholesale and retail trade of alcohol are considered.
Aims. To determine the impact of a set of 2006 Russian alcohol policies on deaths due to traffic accidents in the country.
Design, Setting, Participants. We used autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) interrupted time series techniques to model the impact of the intervention on the outcome series. The time series began in January 2000 and ended in December 2010. The alcohol policy was implemented in January 2006, providing 132 monthly observations in the outcome series, with 72 months of pre-intervention data and 60 months of post-intervention data.
Measurements. The outcome variables were the monthly number of male- and female-specific deaths of those aged 15+ years due to transport accidents in Russia.
Results The 2006 set of alcohol policies had no impact on female deaths due to traffic accidents (ω0 = 50.31, p = .27). However, the intervention model revealed an immediate and sustained monthly decrease of 203 deaths due to transport accidents for males (ω0 = -203.40, p = .04), representing an 11% reduction relative to pre-intervention levels.
Conclusions. Our findings are consistent with prior research elsewhere showing that alcohol policies are associated with a reduction in deaths due to transport accidents, especially for males. Given the high volume of alcohol consumption and the high rate of deaths due to traffic accidents in Russia, our findings are substantively important. Specifically, our results show that the implementation of the 2006 Russian alcohol policy is partially responsible for saving more than 2400 male lives annually that would otherwise have been lost to traffic accidents. More generally, our study reveals that alcohol policy is one of multiple pathways that can be utilized to reduce traffic fatalities.