How Beer Prices Affect STD's

CEP article by Sen and Luong:

We attempt to contribute to the literature by evaluating the effects of higher beer prices on gonorrhea and chlamydia rates through pooling data across Canadian provinces and over time. Ordinary least squares as well as instrumental variables estimates suggest that higher real beer prices are correlated with a reduction in both gonorrhea and chlamydia rates, with corresponding implied elasticities within a tightly defined interval of (roughly) −0.7 to −0.9. However, the increase in real beer prices over the sample period is only responsible for less than a tenth of the decline in gonorrhea rates.