Relation Between Excise Tax and Beer Consumption in Chosen EU States

Excise tax is one of the most important financial restrict instrument in frame of the whole agri food sector and European Union is in many aspects very heterogeneous block. One of these aspects is various beer excise tax in every member state; in the EU is harmonized only minimum level of the excise tax (0.748 EUR per ht/degree Plato). The aim of the topic, respectively the research question is to confirm or to disprove the general significance of the relation between excise tax level and beer consumption level (per capita) in the European states. The paper is finding answers for four research questions: (i) Does the amount of excise tax influences beer consumption?; (ii) Is there any relation between the share (%) of alcohol consumed in beer and beer consumption?; (iii) Does the minimum age for drinking beer influences beer consumption?; (iv) Does the GDP per capita influences beer consumption?; In the paper are used statistical methods. The data sources are Brewers of Europe, World Health Organization and World Bank. For the analysis are used data from 33 European states. The excise tax influences beer consumption in every state variously, so it makes sense to keep tax policy in this area on the national level in frame of EU.