All Working Papers

We explore whether the global financial crisis has had heterogeneous e¤ects on traded goods di¤erentiated by quality. Combining a dataset of Argentinean firm-level destination-specific wine exports with quality ratings, we show that higher quality exports grew faster before the crisis, but this trend reversed during the recession. Quantitatively, the effect is large: up to nine percentage points difference in trade performance can be explained by the quality composition of exports. This fight from quality was triggered by a fall in aggregate demand, was more acute when households could substitute imports by domestic alternatives, and was stronger for smaller firms’ exports.

This study examines the effects of increasing provision of hygiene quality information on consumer assessment of restaurant quality. In July 2010 New York City introduced mandatory hygiene grade cards to be displayed in restaurants. I show that both an A grade and better inspection scores are correlated with higher ratings in food, decor, service and price, with the former having a larger impact. These results suggest that consumers give much credence to the information provided byhygiene grade cards but the underlying scores might not reflect the true hygiene quality of restaurants.

The wine industry faces significant risks climate change, such that the security of future production is under threat. To address this risk, in this paper, a framework is proposed to examine responses to climate change in the wine industry. Building upon the literature and relying on expert input, the framework takes into consideration mitigative and adaptive actions across market-based, regulatory/standards-based, and operational-based levels. To explore the framework, a case study is developed for Treasury Wine Estates (TWE), one of the world’s largest wine producers. The case study reveals verification of the framework, with TWE relying on several technologies and unique processes to engage in many mitigative and adaptive actions across the proposed levels. The findings suggest several opportunities for future study.

In this paper we provide a simple and transparent non parametric methodology to express the scores of each wine expert (15) on the same rating scale. We discuss the advantage of this methodology over a linear transformation. The non paramatric method ensures the comparability of scores among experts and allows for a relevant average calculation of available wine scores. This approach may be usefuel to wine professionals who seek to reduce uncertainties leading to improved market efficiency. Uniform scores for many Bordeaux en primeur wines can be freely accessed at globalwinescore.com.

This paper investigates the motives behind the entrepreneurial activity in the Italian beer industry between the late 1980s and mid-1990s. The paper argues that the evolutionary dynamics of the new producers (microbreweries and brewpubs) must be connected to the dynamics of consumption, which have gradually changed consumer preferences and lifestyles since the 1980s. On the one hand, increasing revenues, growing interest in food knowledge, and the rise of new cultural and social meanings attached to food consumption generated a new demand for variety. On the other hand, international integration increased the knowledge of beer typologies and styles. These changes enabled new small firms to enter the market and produce differentiated specialised products. This paper suggests that more research is required on the role of demand to interpret the dynamics of industries. The argument and discussion are based on original in-depth interviews with the pioneering entrepreneurs in Italy’s craft beer segment.

Women are a powerful economic force in the world’s wine market, with marketing of wines made by women to female consumers increasingly important. It is widely assumed that women winemakers in California have shattered the glass ceiling, but few studies have addressed their progress in what remains a male-dominated field. This paper reports on three separate studies assessing their progress. Study 1 assessed the perception that women winemakers have shattered the glass ceiling. Results showed that only 9.8% of California wineries have a woman as the lead winemaker, illuminating a discrepancy between perception and fact. Study 2 investigated whether winery acclaim was associated with this discrepancy. Coding of winery data in Opus Vino (2010) provided support for the hypothesis of proportionally greater acclaim for wineries having women as their lead winemakers. Study 3 tested the hypothesis that the recent increased recognition and visibility received by lead women winemakers is opening doors for other well-qualified women. Using the wineries included in Wine Spectator's California Wine (1999) for a case study, the same set of major wineries was investigated at two times—1999 and 2014. Two approaches were taken to assessing progress: comparing the percentage of wineries with lead women winemakers at both times, and comparing the percentage, taking into account position availability and pattern of gender hiring into available positions. Results showed some increase, 10% in 1999 to 14.7% in 2014 overall, and 20.5% when considering only available positions. Progress appears steady but slow.

In 2008, the EU voted to liberalize its system of planting rights which has strictly regulated vine plantings in the EU. However, after an intense lobbying campaign the liberalization of the planting right system was overturned in 2013 and new regulations created an even more restrictive system. European wine associations complained about the detrimental effects of the new regulations. There is a precedent in history. In 1726, the French political philosopher and landowner Montesquieu complained to the French King about the prohibition on planting new vines. Montesquieu was not successful in his demands to remove the planting rights. Old and recent history suggests that political forces against liberalization of planting rights are very strong. Only the French Revolution in 1789 led to a fundamental liberalization of planting rights. The “liberal period” of the 19th century was sustained by the combination of the French Revolution’s liberal ideology, the thirst for wine of Napoleon’s armies and diseases that wiped out most of the French vineyards.
That said, in the past and the present, enforcement of planting rights is a major problem. In fact, despite the official restrictions, Montesquieu managed to plant his vines, allowing him to become a successful wine producer and merchant and to travel and to spend time thinking, discussing and ultimately writing up his ideas which influenced much of the Western world’s constitutions.

Despite the growing importance of geographical indications (GI) for wines, cheeses, etc., relatively little attention has been devoted to studying the optimal size of a GI region, as well as how lobbying by interest groups may affect the actual size. We develop a political economy model of the size of geographical indications, taking into account possible effects on perceived quality as well as on cost sharing among producers. We show that the political process may result in a GI area that is smaller or larger than the social optimum, not just depending on the relative political influence of existing and potential producers, but also on how changes in quality affect consumer welfare.

The United States and the European Union (EU) have embarked on ambitious negotiations to create a comprehensive free trade agreement known as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). Agricultural markets receive relatively high levels of support and protection in both regions, and therefore are sensitive to the discussions surrounding the TTIP. Wine is the highest valued agricultural product traded between the United States and the EU, and any reduction in trade barriers resulting from the TTIP has the capacity to generate additional trade in this sector. We carefully develop parameters to characterize the effects of tariffs and domestic regulations that affect production and consumption of wine in these two regions. Results show that reductions in tariffs would have relatively small effects in these wine markets, whereas reductions in EU domestic policies that affect wine grape production would have much larger trade and welfare implications.

We examine the role of repetition in government regulation. Using Florida restaurant inspection data from 2003 to 2010, we find that inspectors new to the inspected restaurant report 12.7-17.5% more violations than the second visit of a repeat inspector. This effect is even more pronounced if the previous inspector had inspected the restaurant more times. The difference between new and repeat inspectors is driven partly by inspector heterogeneity in inherent taste and stringency, and partly by new inspectors having fresher eyes in the first visit of a restaurant. These findings highlight the importance of inspector assignment in regulatory outcomes.

In this article, we show that a small innovation in inspection technology can make substantial differences in inspection outcomes. For restaurant hygiene inspections, the state of Florida has introduced a handheld electronic device, the portable digital assistant (PDA), which reminds inspectors of 1,000 potential violations that may be checked for. Using inspection records from July 2003 to June 2009, we find that the adoption of PDA led to 11% more detected violations and subsequently restaurants may have gradually increased their compliance efforts. We also find that PDA use is significantly correlated with a reduction in restaurant-related foodborne disease outbreaks.

This note seeks to compare across countries the various excise taxes that are applied to wholesale prices for wines and other alcohols. Many of those taxes are volumetric (x dollars per litre of product or of the alcohol therein) while only a few are ad valorem, such as Australia’s 29%. To make the specific taxes comparable with the ad valorem ones, it is necessary to nominate wholesale price points in a common currency (AUD) and average alcohol contents (12.5% for wines, 5% for beers, 40% for spirits).
We present two types of comparisons of what we call the consumer tax equivalent (both of which ignore the GST or VAT that might then also be added at the retail level). One is the percentage by which the tax raises the wholesale price at particular price points. The other is the number of cents by which the tax raises the wholesale price per standard drink (=0.0125 litres of pure alcohol).

We study the structure and performance of the coffee export sector in Ethiopia, Africa’s most important coffee producer, over the period 2003 to 2013. We find an evolving policy environ-
SUMMARY | APRIL 201
ment leading to structural changes in the export sector, including an elimination of vertical integration for most exporters. Ethiopia’s coffee export earnings improved dramatically over this period, i.e. a four-fold real increase. This has mostly been due to increases in international market prices. Quality improved only slightly over time, but the quantity exported increased by 50 percent, seemingly explained by increased domestic supplies as well as reduced local consumption. To further improve export performance, investments to increase the quantities produced and to improve quality are needed, including an increase in washing, certification, and traceability, as these characteristics are shown to be associated with significant quality premi- ums in international markets.

This working paper provides a compilation of statistics on international wine consumption, production and trade from the mid-nineteenth century until the beginning of the Second World War. The statistical data is structured in three parts dealing with consumption, production and trade both at the world level and for a broad sample of countries. The data presented for Spain, France and Italy, the leading three nations in the wine market, are especially wide-ranging.

Marketing and packaging are substantial expenditures in many consumer products industries. We look at one such industry, mass-market lager beer, and show that when consumers taste blind, they cannot distinguish between three major competing beer brands. Our results suggest that brand loyalty in this market is likely to be driven largely by marketing and packaging, and not by the underlying sensory properties of the competing products.

The author compared two methods for assessing the reliability of blind wine tastings of South African Sauvignon Blanc and Pinotage white and red wines.
The first method required the taster to rank each of the 8 white and red wines from 1 for the most preferred to 8 for the least preferred, with tied ranks permitted when 2 or more wines were equally preferred. The second used scores representing a taster’s perceived quality of wine as: 50%-69% =Poor/Unacceptable;
70%-79%= Fair/Mediocre; 80%-89%= Good/Above Average; and 90%-100%= Excellent to Superior. Results indicated that the two methods provided quite different results with respect to the critical issue of identifying replicate wines; while the identification of replicate white and red wines proved successful when wine scores were used, not a single wine taster could successfully identify replicate white or red wines when using ranking methods. This finding, plus the fact that very different scorings can produce the very same rankings, such as 1, 2, and 3 being given scores of 60, 64, 66 (Poor/Unacceptable); 70,72, 76 (Fair/Mediocre);
80, 83, 87 (Good/Above Average; and 90, 95, 98. (Excellent to Superior), led to the conclusion that such flaws in the ranking method render it of very limited usefulness in the evaluation of the results of blind wine tasting.

This paper aims to assess the role of wine as a financial asset in the diversification of French investors’ portfolios. Our 2007-2013 monthly database is composed of Liv-ex indexes and the WineDex indexes from iDealwine, an online platform for wine investment in France. We also include stocks, bonds and a risk-free asset and constitute several portfolios based on the degree of investor risk aversion, as proposed by Canner et al. (1997). Moreover, we compare wine to another alternative asset, gold. Using both mean-variance (Markowitz 1952) and mean value-at-risk (Favre and Galeano 2002) portfolio optimization, we find that portfolios with wine (or gold) are more efficient than portfolios without it. Moreover, we use the Sharpe (1964) and modified Sharpe (Gregoriou and Gueyie 2003) ratios to calculate performance and find that the higher the proportion of wine (or gold), from 5% to 50%, the higher the portfolio performance is. We also find that French wine indexes, particularly WineDex Bordeaux, are more profitable than gold or Liv-ex indexes. This suggests that French investors should invest in wine through iDealwine and not through Liv-ex.

The purpose of this research is to examine the relationship between market structure and performance in the wine sector using data from two Canadian provinces. Investigation is conducted on alternative hypothesis defined as the Structure-Conduct-Performance (SCP) hypothesis, the Relative-Market-Power (RMP) hypothesis and the Efficiency Structure (ES) hypothesis. The performance is measured by the number of awards gained by wineries. Using regression analysis, we find support to the ES hypothesis. The empirical findings suggest that more research should be done on the efficiency structure of wineries in their respective markets.

The use of oak barrels to improve the quality of wine and to aid in the maturation process has a long history (Garde-Cerdán and Ancín-Azpilicueta, 2006), and has become a core part of the expertise of wine makers globally. Wine barrels are expensive, and constitute a considerable share in the cost of making a fine wine - this is why it is estimated that only 4% of wineries world-wide use them (Anson, 2013). Yet there is not much in the literature on the financing models available to wine makers, or on how they decide on the optimal financing strategy, although some authors do address the issue tangentially (e.g. Carter, 2012; Monday and Wood-Harper, 2010; Blake et al., 1998). This is arguably because there are really only two financial models in use around the world: buy the barrels with own funds, or borrow directly or indirectly from a bank using a conventional loan instrument with collateral. This neglect exists despite the more recent emphasis on value chain financing in the literature (e.g. Miller and Jones, 2010).
Elsewhere in the world wine makers have the option of a) buying barrels with their own funds; b) of borrowing in the form of a collateralised loan or a lease from the traditional banking sector or from a wine industry-specific bank; or c) of taking out a lease in the form of barrel-specific lending. The second of these options represents a conventional financial model. The lease option works much like vehicle finance. The owner of the equipment (in this case wine barrels), also called the lessor, gives a client the opportunity to rent the equipment over a fixed time period against an agreed rental payment. The lessee has the option to return the equipment after the expiry of the agreed term, or to take over ownership in the event that there was a buyout option (Kirkham, 2011). The lessor typically gains a tax advantage in writing down the value of the capital asset. The lessee frees their capital for other uses, especially after the harvest when wine making incurs a host of other costs. In a lease the equipment itself is the collateral for the loan, unlike a regular loan, where additional collateral may be required.
The third option, barrel-specific lending, is found in different variations in France and in South Africa. The purpose of this paper is to describe the origins of the rental model in use in these two countries, and to describe the business model that has been put in place to gain access to the market. The attention then shifts to the identification of those characteristics of the market in wine barrels that make the South African version of the model suited to the needs of the local market. The paper ends with some information on international trade in wine barrels as an indication of market size and some reflections on how to grow the business.

We examine the degree of consensus in quality ratings of US among prominent wine publications. Ratings are an important source of information for both wine consumers and wine researchers. For the purpose of wine research, are ratings on the ubiquitous 100 point scale reliable, objective measures of quality? The value of expert judgment has been called into question by a number of studies, especially in the context of wine competitions and tasting events. Our study is part of a much smaller literature focusing on ratings by expert critics. We look at four publications: Wine Spectator (WS) and Wine Enthusiast (WE), which review a broad selection of the wine market, and Wine Advocate (WA) and International Wine Cellar (IWC), which are more selective and focus more on the high-end of the market. We find a similar level of consensus, measured by the correlation coefficient, between some pairs of critics regarding wines from California and Washington as Ashton (2013) does for critics of Bordeaux wine. However, among other pairs the correlation is much lower, suggesting almost no consensus. Consensus is not found to be related to the blinding policies (or lack thereof) of the critical publications. Our findings show that quality ratings have a substantial degree of objectivity to them.

Eighty years after Prohibition, the United States of America has become the world's largest consumer of wine and the fourth largest producer. The role of the country is comparable at the world level to the role of England in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in Europe: a hub within the wine-producing economy, with a leading role as taste-maker, with a remarkable effect of construction or transformation of the territories of wine. American cinema tends to reflect this new passion for the wine in the society. The whole point is to understand the discourse it holds, as well as the imaginary which it builds around this drink. Wine has become almost commonplace regarding its appearances on screen, not in what it means. In order to be more democratic, America seeks to get rid of old codes that rule all that surrounds wine.