A COMMENT ON ALLOWING SATURDAY SALES IN THE SWEDISH RETAIL MONOPOLY

Abstract

The paper ‘Saturday opening of alcohol retail shops in Sweden: an experiment in two phases’, written by Norström & Skog (2005), found a modest but statistically significant increase in alcohol off-premise sales in Systembolaget, the state retail monopoly, during a pilot experiment (Phase I) and an equivalent increase in all of Sweden (Phase II). This is not an unexpected finding, as any increase in alcohol availability typically stimulates increased sales. They found no associated country-wide drinking and driving arrests in Phase II. This indicator is biased, of course, by the actual operations of the police, not necessarily reflecting overall drinking and driving. There was no change in assault indicators, often linked with heavy drinking. With no increases in alcohol-related problems, these results can be taken by some as evidence that increasing off-premise alcohol sale does not increase drinking or alcohol problems. There are several problems with this simple conclusion. During the years of these analyses, limits on European Union (EU) traveler alcohol imports into Sweden were significantly increased. As a result of Swedish membership in the EU (comparing 1996 to 2003), spirits consumption (litres per capita, 15 years and older) has remained relatively constant, while spirits sales at Systembolaget actually declined from 1.4 to 1.1 litres. National wine and beer consumption has increased over 70%, while Systembolaget sales have increased by about 50% for wine and 75% for beer. Restaurant spirits and wine sales have increased substantially (beer about the same) during the same period. Registered alcohol consumption (Systembolaget plus licensed private outlets) accounted for almost 80% of total estimated consumption in 1995 but less than 70% in 2002, Within this context, it is unrealistic to expect that Systembolaget sales would keep pace with total consumption. It has become more convenient for Swedes to purchase lower-cost alcohol in other EU countries. Thus Swedes have apparently taken advantage of the higher traveler import allowances to bring in low-cost alcohol from such EU countries as Denmark and Germany. This means that less alcohol consumed is actually sold in Swedish monopoly stores. Prior to the changes associated with EU membership, there were only two available practical sources of alcohol for Swedes, i.e. state monopoly stores and privately licensed restaurants which actually purchased their spirits and wine supplies only from Systembolaget. If Saturday opening for Systembolaget stores had occurred in the pre-EU phase in Sweden, where there were both higher prices on alcohol and rather restricted private import allowances, we could expect Systembolaget sales to have increased much more than the 3.7% found in this study. In short, this natural experiment of allowing Saturday sales for Systembolaget stores has been conducted in a time of substantial changes in other aspects of the retail alcohol market when, in additional to higher traveler import allowances, restaurants could obtain their alcohol supplies from private domestic sources and imported alcohol could be sold to restaurants and promoted by a number of private alcohol importers. In short, this is a study of an important change in days of sale which is largely overshadowed by concurrent other changes in alcohol purchase and increase in assault indicators consumption patterns of Swedes. Even if there had been reported changes in alcohol-related problems, it would have been difficult for the authors to attribute these changes solely to these modest increases in Systembolaget sales.