We exploit a quasi-experiment created when New York State began in 2011 to tax cigarettes sold on Native American Reservations. The regime change represents a unique opportunity to quantify brand loyalty because it almost doubled the price of premium-brand cigarettes, while Native brands were...

This study analyzes data on cigarette purchasing, using the IRI academic dataset. Major findings are: cigarette purchasing in this market exhibits a reverse-J, or ‘NBD (Negative Binomial Distribution)-like shape: many infrequent buyers and fewer frequent buyers, although this pattern may be...