The common perception in America is that French foreign policy is all too often driven by crass economic interests such as, say, sanctions profiteering from a certain corruption-riddled United Nations program that allowed a certain former Iraqi dictator to line the pockets of certain western officials with illicit proceeds from certain oil sales. But a new working paper from two Stanford economists, published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, suggests that France misjudged where at least some of its economic interests truly lay, at least in respect of its decision to obstruct President Bush in the run-up to the Iraq war.

As France was busy blocking America at the U.N. Security Council, Americans were busy launching a boycott of French wine. It worked. Larry Chavis and Phillip Leslie estimate that American sales of French wine, calculated by volume, sank by an average of 13% during the first six months of the Iraq war. At the peak of the boycott, weekly French wine sales were 26% short of the normal level. The researchers estimate that this translated to a $112 million reduction in sales during the period they studied. Messrs. Chavis and Leslie focused on four cities in particular – Boston, Houston, Los Angeles, and San Diego – for their high per capita wine consumption and varied political trends, and discovered that liberal Los Angeles came second in boycott participation only to conservative San Diego. In short, France’s decision to antagonize America was an economic flop.

As the economists note, boycotts are a matter of some debate in the economics profession. Researchers have long tried to determine whether and when consumers will care deeply enough about an issue to forego a product they would otherwise enjoy using. But France had several strikes against it in this instance, not least of them being that oenophiles increasingly view French wine as overpriced anyway when compared to truly fine wines imported from other foreign countries like Chile, Australia, and California, not to mention the Finger Lakes of New York and the North Fork of Long Island, or Israel. Even before the war controversy, imports of French wine stood at a paltry 2.7% of American wine purchases by volume. So Iraq was liberated despite France’s “non,” and Americans protested that “non” by drinking even more of the better and cheaper wines on the market. We can toast to that.