The demand for alcohol literature is vast and much conflicting information about the nature of the demand for alcoholic beverages has been published. This paper presents a survey of the literature, and then uses the technique of meta-regression analysis to establish insights into the nature of the demand for beer, wine and spirits. Unlike previous meta-studies of the demand for alcoholic beverages this study adjusts for the precision of each elasticity estimate. The analysis presented suggests reported elasticity estimates will be influenced by such factors as estimation technique, data frequency and time period under consideration. With respect to time, the findings suggest that the demand for alcoholic beverages has become less inelastic since the mid-1950s and that the income elasticity has been falling since the mid-1960s. The analysis also found support for the idea that alcohol as a commodity group is a necessity, and that consumers respond to price discounting with inventory behaviour rather than true substitution behaviour. Little support is found for the idea that the demand for alcoholic beverages varies fundamentally across most countries, although wine may be an exception.

Purpose -The demand for alcohol is a well-researched topic, yet the published literature regarding consumer responses to changes in the price of alcohol includes many conflicting and inconsistent results. This paper seeks to present an analysis of known own-price elasticity estimates, and to attempt to understand why reported results differ. Design/methodology/approach -The approach taken to analysing the data is the meta-regression approach. Specifically, the meta-regression considers 150 beers, spirits, and wines, own price elasticity point estimates, which have been drawn from studies that consider demand responses to changes in the price of alcohol in 18 different countries. Findings -The results of the empirical work reported in this paper suggest that the year of the study, the length of study, the per capita level of alcohol consumption, and the relative ethanol share of a beverage are important factors when explaining variations in consumer demand responses to changes in the price of alcohol. Interestingly, the study also suggests that country-specific and beverage-specific effects are not important. Originality/value -The paper is valuable as it uses the meta-regression framework to control for study design characteristics and, once these characteristics are controlled for, it becomes possible to identify the underlying trend in the demand for alcohol. Specifically, the trend was shown to be one where the demand for alcoholic beverages became increasingly inelastic up to 1969 and decreasingly inelastic thereafter.

The state government of Western Australia has suggested there are economies of scale in local government service delivery and that council amalgamations would allow substantial efficiencies to be realised. In this article, the Data Envelopment Analysis method is used to measure efficiency at 98 local councils in Western Australia in 2009 and 2010. Although many councils were found to be operating under increasing returns to scale, many others were found to be operating under decreasing returns to scale. This suggests there is room for either scaling down or expanding for some local councils to achieve optimal scale.

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