[Alcohol drinking--problems in assessing the public economic impact].

Alcohol consumption is usually regarded as sizeable economic burden to society. Here it is argued that only the external costs of alcohol consumption represent the true costs to society. The methodological and empirical difficulties encountered in assessing these costs may explain the inadequacy of most of the empirical studies available. Therefore, at the moment a valid assessment of the economic burden of alcohol consumption in Germany is not feasible. Anyhow, such an assessment seems to be of questionable value because the actual situation is compared with a hypothetical non-alcohol situation. Therefore, economists should focus on cost-benefit-analysis of real-world policy options.