Bar opening hours, alcohol consumption and workplace accidents

Abstract

It is widely proven that individuals that consume more alcohol are also much more likely to suffer from a working accident. However, this observed correlation may be due to other unobserved factors affecting both alcohol consumption and working accidents (such as the type of job). Thus, in this paper we establish the causal impact of alcohol consumption on working accidents by exploiting a reduction in Spanish bar opening hours that was introduced progressively throughout regions and time. We first show that the policy effectively reduced working accidents. Although there may be many channels by which bar closing hours affect working accidents, we provide evidence that alcohol consumption, which stands as one of these potential channels, is also reduced after the introduction of the policy. Our paper is the first one to provide evidence that stricter closing times for bars causally reduce accidents at work. This is important from a policy point of view as working accidents stand as a very important determinant of productivity levels and entail very high costs in terms of health and disability.