Firm conduct: The case of the United States malt beverage industry

This dissertation examines the role of strategic-pricing in a product-differentiated oligopolistic industry. The U.S. malt beverage industry is considered because it resembles the consumer-goods industries that populate a modern market economy. The analysis is based on the empirical conduct parameter model in which firm behavior is treated as an unknown parameter. Traditional textbook models of oligopoly--Bertrand-pricing, price-matching, dominant-firm, and joint-profit-maximization--are tested to determine which, if any, adequately describe brewer behavior. While most of the textbook models receive little empirical support, we identify a structure reminiscent of a dominant group where dominant-group members share a common empirical conjecture.