Impact of Allowing Sunday Alcohol Sales in Georgia on Employment and Hours

Abstract

This paper uses differential timing across counties of the removal of restrictions on Sunday alcohol sales in the state of Georgia to determine whether the change had an impact on employment and hours in the beer, wine, and liquor retail sales industry. A triple-difference (DDD) analysis finds significant relative increases in average weekly hours in the treated industry. There is no significant relative employment increase. The DDD hours result is stronger when we limit the counties removing restrictions to those that border states with significantly higher alcohol excise taxes.

JEL Classification: C21, L38, L89