The recent article by Daley et al. advocates large increases in alcohol taxes claiming both public health benefits from reduced consumption and that almost all of the cost would be borne by high-risk drinkers. The authors rely on the assumption that the majority of drinkers impose external costs...

Does economics justify restricting alcohol consumption? A new line of research concludes that alcohol involves significant social costs and that various restrictions would lead to net social gains. This article focuses on Levy and Miller (1995), who conduct a cost-benefit analysis of...

A number of theorists assume that drinking has harmful economic effects, but data show that drinking and earnings are positively correlated. We hypothesize that drinking leads to higher earnings by increasing social capital. If drinkers have larger social networks, their earnings should...