This paper examines the impact of Maryland’s 2011 3% alcohol sales tax on household alcohol purchases using NielsenIQ scanner data. Using a synthetic difference-in-difference strategy, I find a monthly ethanol purchases per adult decline by approximately 5.5 percent in the full sample and 9.2 percent among households that purchased alcohol in the year prior to the tax increase.

This paper examines the non-linear effects of beer excise taxes on alcohol-impaired traffic fatalities. We find that larger tax increases have a larger and more precisely estimated impact of traffic fatalities.