Boycotts

Boycotts and Violence

Sumanta Banerjee ([email protected]) is best known for his book In the Wake of Naxalbari: A History of the Naxalite Movement in India (1980). The Maoists want a provision in the electoral rules to arm the voter with the right to reject a candidate, but if the voters are granted such a provision, will they allow them to participate in the elections, or still insist on boycotting them? It is hi...

Boycotts and Restrictive Marketing Arrangements

A Stochastic Model of Consumer Boycotts

This paper presents a model of consumer boycotts where the discrete choices of concerned consumers are represented as a stochastic processes. We solve for the limiting distribution of the process and analyze its properties. We then discuss how the model relates to game-theoretic models of collective action and derive an equilibrium selection result. The type of equilibrium selected depends on t...

The Competitive Effects of Consumer Boycotts

I present a model for consumer boycotts. The more a firm complies with consumers’ wishes, the higher its marginal cost, but the lower the probability of facing a consumer boycott. I show that the threat of a consumer boycott can increase the expected profits of firms. Firms lose out when they do face a boycott, but gain even more when their competitor does, giving them more market power. The st...

IGCC Proposal Narrative The Effectiveness of International Trade Boycotts

The main goal of this project is to analyze the mechanisms of trade boycotts and their effectiveness in disrupting international trade flows. International boycotts are a special form of non-violent conflict between countries and are often sparked by nationalist or religious feelings. Similar to violent forms of conflict like war, they are costly and ex-post inefficient as they destroy rents in...