The emerging middle class has become a force of great economic importance in consumer markets around the globe. This paper examines the impact of a substantial rise in Brazil's living standards on the development of the country's large soft-drink market, during a period which saw unprecedented...

Consider a setting where threatened rather than actual import competition restrains a domestic oligopoly's prices. I show that not modeling the entry threat may underestimate the true degree of market power, as incumbents' blunted price responses to demand shocks resemble perfectly-competitive...

This paper demonstrates that when an industry faces potential entry and this threat of entry constrains pre-entry prices, cost and conduct are not identified from the comparative statics of equilibrium. In such a setting, the identifying assumption behind the well-established technique of...

Brazil's established soft-drink firms recently lost ground to multiple low-price entrants, with small-scale operations and minimal advertising. While incumbents attributed such undercutting to entrants' lower costs from non-compliance with the law, "generics" counterargued that incumbents' high...