Taxation and Moral Regulation

Start date: 1 September 2013
End date: 30 September 2014
Funding: British Academy/Leverhulme Trust Small Research Grant
Value: £2108
Primary investigator: Professor Henry Yeomans

In the Middle Ages, the price of alcohol was limited by law. Today, excise duties are used to inflate prices and, in the rhetoric of the Coalition Government, to help regulate ‘problem-drinking’.

So, when and why did alcohol become a legitimate object of taxation? Have alcohol excise duties become a means of behavioural regulation? What normative or moral judgments are involved in their use?

Drawing on wider social science literature on regulation and governmentality, this project investigates the historical development of alcohol excise duties as a way to govern behaviour.

Publications and outputs

Yeomans H. 2019. Regulating Drinking through Alcohol Taxation and Minimum Unit Pricing: A Historical Perspective on Alcohol Pricing Interventions. Regulation and Governance. 3-17 13.1

Yeomans H. 2018. Taxation, State Formation and Governmentality: The Historical Development of Alcohol Excise Duties in England and Wales. Social Science History. 269-293 42.2