Template-Type: ReDIF-Paper 1.0
Author-Name: Saloni Khurana
Author-Name-First: Saloni
Author-Name-Last: Khurana
Author-Email: saloni.khurana471@gmail.com
Author-Workplace-Name: Indian Institute of Foreign Trade
Author-Name: Kanika Mahajan
Author-Name-First: Kanika
Author-Name-Last: Mahajan
Author-Email: kanika.mahajan@ashoka.edu.in
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Economics, Ashoka University
Title: Public Safety for Women: Is Regulation of Social Drinking Spaces Effective?
Abstract: This paper examines the impact of reduced availability of hard liquor in bars on sexual crimes against women outside their homes. We construct a district level panel dataset on reported crimes and use an identification strategy that exploits a natural experiment that led to a complete crackdown on bars selling hard liquor in a state of India. Using a difference-in-difference strategy, we show that placing restrictions on alcohol sale through closure of on-premise drinking outlets that serve hard liquor reduces reported incidence of sexual assault and harassment against women by 25% but has no effect on reported rapes. We conduct placebo tests and show that the result is not driven by existing pre-trends. The result is also robust to an alternative estimation strategy using a synthetic control construction. These results have policy implications for regulating social drinking spaces due to their impact on women's public safety.
length: 40
Creation-Date: 20190502
Revision-Date: 
Publication-Status: 
File-URL: https://dp.ashoka.edu.in/ash/wpaper/paper11_0.pdf
File-Format: Application/pdf 
Number: 11
Keywords: alcohol regulation
Keywords: bars
Keywords: hard liquor
Keywords: sexual assaults
Keywords: violence against women
Handle: RePEc:ash:wpaper:11