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Abstract
Current blue laws are primarily concerned with the preclusion of the sale of alcohol on Sunday in a handful of states. In this study, we examine an important potential secular benefit of Sunday sales bans: a reduction in underage drinking, which is linked to a multitude of deleterious risky behaviors. We exploit a pseudo-natural experiment which has arisen from the heterogeneity in Sunday sales status across counties and municipalities in Georgia. To account for potential endogeneity of the decision to repeal, we employ both fixed effects and an instrumental variable approach. Across several different model specifications, we find no effect of repeal on underage drinking. Policy-makers would do well to seek methods other than sale prohibitions to illicit change in underage drinking rates.