Working Paper: NBER ID: w13258
Authors: Orley Ashenfelter; Stephen Ciccarella; Howard J. Shatz
Abstract: In early 2003, France actively tried to thwart the plans of the Bush administration to build international support for a war to depose Iraqi ruler Saddam Hussein. In response, calls in the United States for a boycott of French products, wine in particular, rebounded through all forms of media. In the spring of 2003, French business people even reported that the boycott calls were hurting their U.S. sales. Using a dataset of sales of nearly 4,700 individual wine brands, we show that there actually was no boycott effect. Rather, sales of French wine dipped for two reasons. First, they experience a cyclical peak at holiday time, from November through early January, and the boycott was called during the February to May period. Second, sales of French wine have been in a secular decline in the United States. Sales in February through May 2003 merely stayed on trend. We contrast our results with other recent work that has found evidence of a boycott effect but that omits the holiday effect from several specifications. French wine producers may be having economic problems, but it is not because of their government's foreign policy.
Keywords: boycott; French wine; US consumer behavior; Iraq War
JEL Codes: D12; F14; L66; Q17
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| US boycott of French wine in 2003 (L66) | sales of French wine (L66) |
| cyclical peak in sales (E32) | sales of French wine during boycott (L66) |
| secular decline in French wine sales (L66) | sales of French wine during boycott (L66) |
| sales during the boycott period (L42) | established trend of wine sales (L66) |