Excessive alcohol use is associated with a wide range of adverse outcomes that inflict large societal costs. This paper investigates the impacts of increases in regulated opening hours of Swedish alcohol retailers on alcohol purchases, health and crime outcomes by relating changes in these outcomes in municipalities that increased their retail opening hours to those in municipalities whose opening hours remained unchanged. We show that extended opening hours led to statistically and economically significant increases in alcohol purchases by around two percent per weekly opening hour, but find no corresponding increases in adverse outcomes related to the consumption of alcohol. We study potential mechanisms, such as consumption spillovers and on and off-premise substitution, and we discuss policy implications of our findings.

过度饮酒会导致大量的不良后果，从而造成巨大的社会成本。本文通过将增加零售营业时间的市镇的这些结果的变化与营业时间保持不变的市镇的营业时间联系起来，调查瑞典酒类零售商受监管的营业时间增加对酒类购买、健康和犯罪结果的影响。我们表明，延长开放时间导致每周开放时间在统计上和经济上显着增加酒精购买量约 2%，但没有发现与饮酒相关的不良后果相应增加。我们研究了潜在的机制，例如消费溢出和内部和外部替代，并讨论了我们发现的政策含义。