The first paper, “The Rise and Fall of the World’s Largest Wine Exporter—And Its Institutional Legacy” by Giulia Meloni and Johan Swinnen, provides a lesson in economic history. It analyzes the spectacular rise and the subsequent dramatic decline of the Algerian wine industry during the first half of the 19th century. Fostered by the spread of phylloxera and heavy tariffs on Spanish and Italian wine imports into France, Algeria’s wine production—which was almost non-existent in the 19th century—soared and Algeria became by far the largest wine exporter worldwide. During the mid 1930s, more than two-thirds of the world’s wine exports came from Algeria, a former French colony. However, in subsequent decades French wine regulations and especially the Algerian independence in 1962 con- tributed to a dramatic downfall. As a result, Algeria’s wine industry virtually disappeared in the 1990s.”