Lee, Sangwon

We exploit the variation in the rollout of refrigerated almond milk across US retail stores from 2008 through 2010 to estimate the causal effects on cow’s milk and soymilk. Using monthly retail store scanner data, we find that introducing almond milk reduced retail quantities of soymilk (3.6%) and lactose-free cow’s milk (3%), with smaller effects on organic (2%) and conventional cow’s milk (1%). Effects are larger in stores that adopted earlier or reached higher almond milk shares. Our econometric estimates indicate significant displacement of per capita consumption of soymilk and lactose-free cow’s milk but not conventional cow’s milk.