The Effects of Alcohol Use on Economic Decision Making

In a controlled laboratory experiment, we study the causal effect of alcohol on economic decision making. A treatment group was given a dose of alcohol designed to target a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) of 0.08 while the BAC of those in the control group remained 0.00. We investigate the behavior of control and treatment groups in the following types of tasks: math, uncertainty, overconfidence, strategic games, food choice, anchoring, and altruism. Our results indicate that alcohol consumption has little systematic effect on economic behavior, at least for the BAC level considered. Further, there is little evidence that alcohol differentially impacts the choices of male and female subjects.