The Journal of Economic History

Table of Contents - 2002 - Volume 62, Issue 04  


ARTICLES

Strategic Behavior in Whiskey Distilling, 1887–1895

Karen Clay c1 and Werner Troesken c2

Abstract

This article shows that the Whiskey Trust used exclusive dealing and unusually low prices to deter entry and competition. Evidence of this is based on a unique dataset that allows us to estimate a firm-level demand curve for the trust, and to construct direct estimates of marginal cost. This article also shows that the strategies employed by the trust failed to deter entry. Market structure and state-level antitrust enforcement account for the failure of these strategies.


Correspondence:
c1 Karen Clay is Assistant Professor, Heinz School of Public Policy and Management, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213. E-mail: kclay@andrew.cmu.edu.
c2 Werner Troesken is Associate Professor, Department of History, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260, and Research Associate, National Bureau of Economic Research. E-mail: troesken@pitt.edu.