Policy Quarterly – Volume 17, Issue 4 – November 2021 – Page 73 Lauren Tyler-Harwood and Andrea Kutinova Menclova Local Alcohol Policies in New Zealand Lauren Tyler-Harwood is a researcher in the Department of Economics and Finance at the University of Canterbury. Andrea Kutinova Menclova is an associate professor in the Department of Economics and Finance at the University of Canterbury and is the corresponding author: andrea.menclova@ canterbury.ac.nz. Abstract We document the implementation of local alcohol policies in New Zealand and then study their impacts on crime. A key contribution of our study is that we construct a detailed data set on local alcohol policies applicable across territorial authorities between July 2014 and January 2019. To our knowledge, we are the first ones to provide such a comprehensive overview. In a subsequent analysis, we find that local alcohol policies as recently implemented in New Zealand do not appear to have reduced crime. This result holds for specific policy dimensions and their stringency (e.g., closing times and geographic restrictions on issuing new licences), and is reasonably robust across crime types, days/times of occurrence, and socio- economic subgroups. Our failure to identify significant reductions in crime following the imposition of local alcohol policies may partly reflect the policies being non-binding in some cases: for example, licensed premises had sometimes already operated within the restricted trading hours specified by a local alcohol policy. Keywords local alcohol policies, crime A lcohol consumption is an important part of the sporting, home and social lives of many New Zealanders. While it is widely accepted that moderate levels of consumption yield significant private benefits and generate only small negative externalities, excess alcohol consumption generates large internal and external costs, including via violence and injury (Babor et al., 2010). For example, 18% of interpersonal violence-related deaths worldwide in 2016 were attributable to alcohol consumption (World Health Organization, 2018, p.67). Domestically, the New Zealand Police report that one in three violent crimes are committed by perpetrators who have been drinking prior to the offence (New Zealand Police, 2010, 2018), and the Ministry of Health finds that roughly one in five New Zealanders engage in drinking that carries a risk of harming themselves or others (Ministry of Health, 2019). Alcohol availability – that is, the ease with which alcohol can be obtained – is considered to be a key environmental factor in alcohol-related crime (Babor et al., 2010). In many countries, the post-World War Two era saw a liberalisation of access an overview of their implementation and effects on crime