> From:    Jamie Huddleston <[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: boycott? does it work?        Just a thought about whether boycotts work.  Remember the US boycott on the French when they wouldn't support us right after 9/11 happened?  I am certainly not intending to get policital, as I don't believe Lactnet is the place for that, but I simply want to point out that the US boycott of French goods crippled their economy, to the point where the French voted out that leader and elected a leader who would support the US.  
>   
I'm sorry, but I'm afraid this *is* political when you have a different 
opinion, and the choice of language disturbs me ("didn't support us"). 
Around the world, the US boycott was seen as an example of the lack of 
interest in international culture shown by the current (outgoing) US 
government; you can see this in the lack of translation of foreign 
literature. In any case, it surprises me to see that someone would take 
it for granted that the boycott was successful (far from a unanimous 
opinion, see the abstract below) let alone that it had a significant 
impact on French elections, which had more to do with growing economic 
and racial tensions in France.

The political situation is definitely off-topic for Lactnet, so I will 
say no more about it. But I would not say this is a good example of 
boycotts working.
My deux centimes worth. Sorry... ,002 Euro.

Jo-Anne

 French Wine and the U.S. Boycott of 2003: Does Politics Really Affect 
Commerce?

ORLEY ASHENFELTER
Princeton University - Industrial Relations Section; National Bureau of 
Economic Research (NBER); Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA)
STEPHEN M. CICCARELLA Jr.
Cornell University - Department of Economics; Public Policy Institute of 
California
HOWARD J. SHATZ
RAND Corporation; Public Policy Institute of California July 2007

NBER Working Paper No. W13258
 
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.

Ashenfelter, Orley C., Ciccarella, Stephen M. and Shatz, Howard J., 
"French Wine and the U.S. Boycott of 2003: Does Politics Really Affect 
Commerce?" (July 2007). NBER Working Paper No. W13258 Available at SSRN: 
http://ssrn.com/abstract=1000360

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