Working Paper: CEPR ID: DP14761
Authors: Kym Anderson
Abstract: Europeans settlers in the Australian colonies had a reputation of being heavy drinkers. Rum dominated during the first few decades, followed by beer. It took until the 1970s before Australia’s annual per capita consumption of wine exceeded 10 litres, and even then wine represented only one-fifth of national alcohol consumption. But over the next two decades per capita wine consumption nearly trebled and beer consumption shrunk – the opposite of what happened to global alcohol consumption shares. This paper draws on newly compiled datasets (a) to reveal that Australia was not much more alcoholic than Britain or southern Europe during the nineteenth century and (b) to help explain why it took so long for a consumer interest in wine to emerge in Australia.
Keywords: alcohol; beverage consumption; mix beverage consumption; intensity index; wine; globalization
JEL Codes: No JEL codes provided
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Australia's per capita alcohol consumption during the early years of European settlement (L66) | Comparable to Britain's alcohol consumption (L66) |
| Shift in consumer preference from spirits to beer and then to wine (L66) | Influenced by economic conditions and the high cost of malting barley production (L66) |
| Technological advancements in beer production and changes in taxation policies (L66) | Decline in spirits consumption and the rise of beer (L66) |
| Decline in wine prices relative to beer and spirits (L66) | Increase in wine consumption (L66) |