The Economics Of Beer

Beer has been consumed across the globe for centuries and was the drink of choice in many ancient societies. Today it is the most important alcoholic drink worldwide, in terms of volume and value. The largest brewing companies have developed into global multinationals, and the beer market has enjoyed strong growth in emerging economies, but there has been a substantial decline of beer consumption in traditional markets and a shift to new products. There is close interaction between governments and markets in the beer industry. For centuries, taxes on beer or its raw materials have been a major source of tax revenue and governments have regulated the beer industry for reasons related to quality, health, and competition. This book is the first economic analysis of the beer market and brewing industry. The introduction provides an economic history of beer, from monasteries in the early Middle Ages to the recent 'microbrewery movement', whilst other chapters consider whether people drink more beer during recessions, the effect of television on local breweries, and what makes a country a 'beer drinking' nation. It comprises a comprehensive and unique set of economic research and analysis on the economics of beer and brewing and covers economic history and development, supply and demand, trade and investment, geography and scale economies, technology and innovation, health and nutrition, quantity and quality, industrial organization and competition, taxation and regulation, and regional beer market developments.

This book investigates the birth and evolution of craft breweries around the world. Microbrewery, brewpub, artisanal brewery, henceforth craft brewery, are terms referred to a new kind of production in the brewing industry contraposed to the mass production of beer, which has started and diffused in almost all industrialized countries in the last decades. This project provides an explanation of the entrepreneurial dynamics behind these new firms from an economic perspective. The product standardization of large producers, the emergence of a new more sophisticated demand and set of consumers, the effect of contagion, and technology aspects are analyzed as the main determinants behind this ‘revolution’. The worldwide perspective makes the project distinctive, presenting cases from many relevant countries, including the USA, Australia, Japan, China, UK, Belgium, Italy and many other EU countries.

Beer has played a pivotal role in history, from the transition to an agarian lifestyle in ancient Mesopotamia to bankrolling Britain's imperialist conquests. Beeronomics tells the story of beer through economics, the innovations it brought, and how its strategic taxation and regulation helped shape the world.

This book builds on the highly successful Geography of Beer: Regions, Environment, and Society (2014) and investigates the geography of beer from two expanded perspectives: culture and economics. The respective chapters provide case studies that illustrate various aspects of these themes. As the beer industry continues to reinvent itself and its economic and cultural geographies, this book showcases historical, current, and future trends at the local, regional, national, and international scales.

A definitive study that uses a blend of theory, history, and data to analyze the evolution of the US brewing industry; draws on theoretical tools of industrial organization, game theory, and management strategy. This definitive study uses theory, history, and data to analyze the evolution of the US brewing industry from a fragmented market to an emerging oligopoly. Drawing on a rich and extensive data set and applying the theoretical tools of industrial organization, game theory, and management strategy, the authors provide new quantitative and qualitative perspectives on an industry they characterize as "a veritable market laboratory." The US brewing industry illustrates many of the important topics in industrial organization, economic policy, and business strategy, including industry concentration, technological change, brand proliferation, and mixed pricing strategies. After giving an overview of the industry, Tremblay and Tremblay discuss basic demand and cost conditions and industry concentration. They describe the evolution of the leading mass-producing brewers and the emergence of both specialty brewers and imports. They analyze the history and the causes of product and brand proliferation (showing how product proliferation leads to firm dominance), discuss price, advertising, merger, and other management strategies, and examine the industry's economic performance. Finally, they discuss public policy, including anti-trust and public health issues. The authors' set of industry, firm, and brand data for the period 1950-2002 -- the most comprehensive data set of economic variables available for an oligopolistic industry -- will be available to purchasers of the book who send an e-mail request. Data sources are listed in an appendix. Robert S. Weinberg, a management strategy scholar and leading consultant to the brewing industry, contributes a foreword. This ambitious, authoritative work, capping the authors' 25-year study of the brewing industry, will be a valuable resource for industry analysts, economists, and students of industrial organization.

Beer is widely defined as the result of the brewing process which has been refined and improved over centuries. Beer is the drink of the masses – it is bought by consumers whose income, wealth, education, and ethnic background vary substantially, something which can be seen by taking a look at the range of customers in any pub, inn, or bar. But why has beer became so pervasive? What are the historical factors which make beer and the brewing industry so prominent? How has the brewing industry developed to become one of the most powerful global generators of output and revenue? This book answers these and other related questions by exploring the history of the beer and brewing industry at a global level. Contributors investigate a number of aspects, such as the role of geographical origin in branding; mergers, acquisitions, and corporate governance (UK, European and US perspectives); national and international political economy; taxation and regulation (including historical and contemporary practice); national and international trade flows and distribution networks; and historical trends in the commercialisation of beer. The chapters in this book were originally published as online articles in Business History.

This edited collection examines the various influences, relationships, and developments beer has had from distinctly spatial perspectives. The chapters explore the functions of beer and brewing from unique and sometimes overlapping historical, economic, cultural, environmental and physical viewpoints. Topics from authors – both geographers and non-geographers alike – have examined the influence of beer throughout history, the migration of beer on local to global scales, the dichotomous nature of global production and craft brewing, the neolocalism of craft beers, and the influence local geography has had on beer’s most essential ingredients: water, starch (malt), hops, and yeast. At the core of each chapter remains the integration of spatial perspectives to effectively map the identity, changes, challenges, patterns and locales of the geographies of beer.

The production of beer today occurs within a bifurcated industrial structure. There exists a small number of large, global conglomerates supplying huge volumes of a limited range of beers, and a plethora of small and medium breweries producing a diverse range of beers sold under unique brands. Brewing, Beer and Pubs addresses a range of contemporary issues and challenges in this key sector of the global economy, and includes contributions by research specialists from a variety of countries and disciplines. This book includes the marketing and globalization of the brewing industry, beer excise duties and market concentration, and reflections upon developments in brewing and beer consumption across the world in order to explore the wide-reaching influence of this industry. Alongside these global topics more localised themes are presented such as market integration in the Chinese beer and wine markets, beer and brewing in Africa and South America, and turbulence and change in the UK public house industry, which demonstrate how the consumption of beer in pubs and other social environments make the beer industry integral to local communities and regions worldwide.