As much of the world goes searching for alternative sources of energy to oil, Brazil's three-decade experience in developing a successful substitute for gasoline merits attention. Brazil is the only sizable economy to date to have developed a ubiquitously distributed alternative to oil-based...

I begin by fitting traditional gravity equations to document that regional flows in the Brazilian cement industry exhibit gravity-like structure, with cement trade decaying sharply in distance traveled. I then show that this large distance effect owes to firms' strategic behavior over and above...