International evidence on the determinants of alcohol advertising restrictions

Abstract

Unlike previous studies, which address the impact of alcohol advertising restrictions on alcohol demand, this article turns the issue around by investigating the determinants of alcohol advertising restrictions. Estimating a series of Probit models, our results show that the probability of adopting advertising restrictions tends to be higher in countries with higher life expectancy, higher per capita income, having a majority of the population that is Muslim and having a higher share of the population that is young. Population density, alcohol consumption and economic freedom play largely insignificant roles in the determination of advertising restrictions.

Notes

¹Available at http://apps.who.int/globalatlas/default.asp

²Although the literature provides conflicting evidence on whether advertising bans affect alcohol consumption, similar to Gallet et al. (2006, 2009) we initially considered the endogeneity of per capita alcohol consumption using a Hausman procedure. Specifically, we regressed per capita alcohol consumption on the exogenous variables in the Probit regressions, as well as the unemployment rate as an instrumental variable. The residual from this regression was then included in the Probit regressions. In all cases, though, the coefficient of this residual was insignificantly different from zero, which does not favour endogeneity of per capita alcohol consumption. Accordingly, all right-side variables were treated as exogenous in the Probit regressions.

³The values of this index range from 0 to 100, with higher values indicating greater economic freedom (i.e. less government involvement in the economy).

⁴SEs were adjusted using White's procedure to control for potential heteroskedasticity.