Is There Convergence in National Alcohol Consumption Patterns? Evidence from a Compositional Time Series Approach

Holmes and Anderson (2017a) introduce two extensive data sets on world alcohol consumption and expenditure and with them investigate, among other things, the possible convergence of national alcohol consumption patterns using wine, beer, and spirit shares. Such share data define a composition, on which conventional statistical analysis using covariances and correlations is invalid. This note reanalyses the data using techniques appropriate for a composition and introduces a statistic that can validly track the variation in national shares around the global mean through time. This variability statistic shows that such convergence of national alcohol patterns has clearly taken place over the period 1961 to 2014 and thus confirms Holmes and Anderson's findings using a valid statistical approach. (JEL Classifications: C18, D12, L66)