To drink or not to drink: the microeconomic analysis of alcohol consumption in Russia in 2006-2010

NRU Higher School of Economics , 2013. No. 20.

Roshchina Y.

The goal of this project is to find out the influence of some economic and social factors on the demand for alcohol in modern Russia. The number of regression models is estimated on the base of "The Russia Longitudinal Monitoring Survey (RLMS-HSE)" 1994-2011. There are classic models of demand for alcohol of Becker and Murphy (1988): static, myopic and rational addiction models. We use two-step way of estimation because of two-step consumer decision ("to drink or not to drink" and how much to drink). This way let it possible to find out the factors of every decision separately. The new idea of this research is to use as independent variables not only economic parameters (as prices and incomes of respondent and his\her family members) but some social characteristics such as educational level, gender, age, nationality, optimism level, alcohol use by other family members, and other. The first results have demonstrated that some social factors (education, marital status, alcohol use by other family members) are more important that the economic ones (as price for alcohol).

Keywords: alcohol consumption, addictive behavior, demand for alcoholic beverages

Publication based on the results of: Пить или не пить: микроэкономический анализ потребления алкоголя россиянами в конце ХХ - начале ХХI вв. (2012)