THE CONTRIBUTION OF BREWERIES TO THE V4 ECONOMY

Abstract

The consumption of beer can be considered a cultural element of many European countries. Therefore, it rep_x0002_resents a great contribution to Central European economies mainly in terms of employment, value-added or taxes and duties. Since beer has a plentiful history and permanent popularity, the most powerful global multi_x0002_nationals gradually took over the global market over the last few decades. Therefore, globalization highly af_x0002_fected the structure of the brewing industry that caused the homogenization of products. The aforementioned and also other factors have led to the increase in the establishment of local craft breweries which produce the beloved beverage characterised by traditional recipe and uniqueness. Hence, in this article, we are focus_x0002_ing on the selected macroeconomic indicators like employment or excise duties generated by breweries in Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, and the Czech Republic. Since there is no separate economic data available on industrial and craft beer yet, we focused on the economic impacts of the brewing industry in general, during the period 2010–2019. In the first part of the results, we provide the rate of excise duty on beer as opposed to other alcoholic beverages and in the second part, we focus on direct employment in the industry. The last part focuses on the relation between these two variables by using regression analysis.