This week in research #62

Here's what caught my eye in research over the past week:

• Bai and Veall (open access) find no evidence that minimum wages increase drinking overall, using data from Canada (and if I have time to read it, I'll blog about it as part of my current series of posts on minimum wage research)
• Randerson et al. (open access) look at eight case studies of alcohol licensing decisions in New Zealand, and find that structural barriers, including racism, restricted the influence of under-resourced communities and Māori in licensing decisions and weakened risk assessment
• Norström, Nilsson, and Svensson (open access) find that a 10% increase in bar density in Sweden would result in a 0.46% increase in nighttime police calls, and that in high-socioeconomic areas the effect was not significant, while the effect was twice as strong in the low-socioeconomic areas as in mid-socioeconomic areas

Finally, I spend today and yesterday at the New Zealand Economics Forum. I wasn't one of the speakers this year, so I could enjoy the proceedings from the floor. You can watch recordings of the sessions now. The Day One video is here, with the video from the breakout session on gene technology here. The Day Two video is here, with the video from the breakout session on Kiwi schools here. Enjoy!