Another study analyzed fatal motor vehicle crashes among people of all ages for the years 1984 to 1992 using fixed-effect models (Mast et al. 1999). These analyses found that the beer tax has no effect on the overall fatality rate but has a significant negative effect on the fatality rate for drivers involved in nighttime, single-vehicle crashes, which commonly involve alcohol. The investigators downplayed the importance of the beer tax, however, because the size of its effect varied when other variables were introduced into the models. Nevertheless, a careful examination of the study’s results reveals significant negative tax effects in most of the fixed-effects models used.7
