TY - JOUR AU - Markowitz,Sara AU - Nesson,Erik AU - Poe-Yamagata,Eileen AU - Florence,Curtis AU - Deb,Partha AU - Andrews,Tracy AU - Barnett,Sarah Beth L. TI - Estimating the Relationship between Alcohol Policies and Criminal Violence and Victimization JF - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series VL - No. 17918 PY - 2012 Y2 - March 2012 DO - 10.3386/w17918 UR - http://www.nber.org/papers/w17918 L1 - http://www.nber.org/papers/w17918.pdf N1 - Author contact info: Sara Markowitz Department of Economics Emory University 1602 Fishburne Dr. Atlanta, GA 30322 Tel: (404) 712-8167 E-Mail: sara.markowitz@emory.edu Erik Nesson Department of Economics Miller College of Business Ball State University Muncie, IN 47306 Tel: 608-358-1658 E-Mail: etnesson@bsu.edu Eileen Poe-Yamagata IMPAQ International, LLC 10420 Little Patuxent Parkway, Suite 300 Columbia, MD 21044 E-Mail: epyamagata@impaqint.com Curtis Florence National Center for Injury Prevention and Control Centers for Disease Control Atlanta, Georgia E-Mail: gul4@cdc.gov Partha Deb Hunter College Department of Economics 695 Park Avenue Room 1524 West New York, NY 10065 Tel: 212/772-5435 Fax: 212/772-5398 E-Mail: partha.deb@hunter.cuny.edu Tracy Andrews IMPAQ International, LLC 10420 Little Patuxent Parkway Suite 300 Columbia, MD 21044 E-Mail: troberts1975@gmail.com Sarah Beth L. Barnett National Center for Injury Prevention and Control Centers for Disease Control Atlanta, GA E-Mail: Hun8@cdc.gov AB - Violence is one of the leading social problems in the United States. The development of appropriate public policies to curtail violence is confounded by the relationship between alcohol and violence. In this paper, we estimate the propensity of alcohol control policies to reduce the perpetration and victimization of criminal violence. We measure violence with data on individual level victimizations from the U.S. National Crime Victimization Survey. We examine the effects of a number of different alcohol control policies in reducing violent crime. These policies include the retail price of beer, drunk driving laws and penalties, keg laws, and serving and selling laws. We find some evidence of a negative relationship between alcohol prices and the probability of alcohol or drug related assault victimizations. However, we find no strong evidence that other alcohol policies are effective in reducing violent crimes. These results provide policy makers with guidance on potential approaches for reducing violence through alcohol beverage control. ER -