Skip to content
Have an account?
Login
or
Register
  • About
    • People
    • Fellows
    • Tastings
    • In the News
    • Awards
      • Christophe Baron Prize
      • AAWE Scholarships
      • AAWE Awards of Merits
    • Downloads
    • Contacts & Copyright
  • Journal
    • Online Journal Member Access
    • Online Journal Library Access
    • Editors
    • JWE – All Issues
    • Submission Guidelines
  • Working Papers
  • Meetings
    • 2023 Stellenbosch
    • 2022 Tbilisi
    • 2019 Vienna
    • 2018 Ithaca
    • 2017 Padua
    • 2016 Bordeaux
    • 2015 Mendoza
    • 2014 Walla Walla
    • 2013 Stellenbosch
    • 2012 Princeton
    • 2011 Bolzano
    • 2010 Davis
    • 2009 Reims
    • 2008 Portland
    • 2007 Trier
  • Membership
Menu
  • About
    • People
    • Fellows
    • Tastings
    • In the News
    • Awards
      • Christophe Baron Prize
      • AAWE Scholarships
      • AAWE Awards of Merits
    • Downloads
    • Contacts & Copyright
  • Journal
    • Online Journal Member Access
    • Online Journal Library Access
    • Editors
    • JWE – All Issues
    • Submission Guidelines
  • Working Papers
  • Meetings
    • 2023 Stellenbosch
    • 2022 Tbilisi
    • 2019 Vienna
    • 2018 Ithaca
    • 2017 Padua
    • 2016 Bordeaux
    • 2015 Mendoza
    • 2014 Walla Walla
    • 2013 Stellenbosch
    • 2012 Princeton
    • 2011 Bolzano
    • 2010 Davis
    • 2009 Reims
    • 2008 Portland
    • 2007 Trier
  • Membership
DONATE
  • Data
  • Jobs & Programs
  • Data
  • Jobs & Programs
Home
»
Working Papers
»
Working Papers
»
Page 8

All Working Papers

More results...

Search in title
Search in content
Year of Publication
Filter by Working Paper Categories
Economics
Business
History
History & Politics
Law
Policy
Unkategorized

Working Paper No. 66

Published: 2010
Category:
Business

Taste Testing of Wine by Expert and Novice Consumers in the Presence of Variations in Quality, Brand and Country of Origin Cues

Anthony Pecotich & Steven Ward
Full Text PDF
Abstract

The findings of an experimental study exploring the taste testing of wine with varying degrees of expertise and in the presence of variations in quality, brand and country of origin (COO) cues are reported. Novices experienced difficulty in evaluating quality and even when detecting a quality difference were unable to assign an intelligent meaning to that difference. Experts did use physical quality and price evaluations, but in a complex and unexpected manner. Novices were found to use brand name in a limited fashion and relied mainly on COO information. The results demonstrated the importance of the extrinsic cues for both novices and experts. Surprisingly, there was no clear evidence of domestic preference.

Working Paper No. 65

Published: 2010
Category:
Economics

Why is there a home bias? A case study of Wine.

Richard Friberg, Robert W. Paterson & Andrew D. Richardson
Full Text PDF
Abstract
Domestic products have a disproportionately high market share on many goods markets. We examine the contribution of preferences to such “home bias”, using detailed data on wine sales in New Hampshire (weekly sales by brand by store for one year). In counterfactual simulations, where we use the same set of products as currently available, the U.S. market share falls from 58 percent to 38 percent if all country-of-origin effects are set equal. Home bias on this market is not explained by higher marginal costs for imports or by lesser store coverage of imported brands. The evidence rather points to higher foreign fixed costs of entry, coupled with a preference for U.S. wines, as the main sources for the high domestic market share.

Working Paper No. 64

Published: 2010
Category:
Business

What future for the Champagne industry?

Aurélie Deluze
Full Text PDF
Abstract
France is one of the largest and most ancient wine producers in the world. Even if its leading position has been challenged over the past decade, France remains a reference in terms of terroir and quality (Anderson, 2001; Berthomeau and al., 2002). Among the different well-known French wine regions, Champagne has a very unique status. Champagne covers less than 4% of the French vineyard whilst representing more than 1/3 of the total of French exports in value (37%).
Several economists (Barrère, 2000, 2001 et 2003 ; Ménival, 2007 ; Rasselet, 2001 ;
Viet, 2003) think that Champagne’s economic success is due to its particular institutional
model, composed of an interprofession, the Comité Interprofessionnel du Vin de Champagne
12
(CIVC) and an AOC (appellation d’origine controlee) , two separate institutions which work
together quite effectively. This model enabled Champagne producers to adapt their offer to the evolving international demand, both in quantity and in quality, and to maintain the equilibrium between grape-growers and Champagne Houses thanks to a fair sharing of the
3
added value. Thanks to the mid-term interprofessional contracts that existed between 1959
and 1989, the CIVC was able to control prices and quantities for a long time. However the liberalization of the markets in the 1990’s led to the end of the interprofessional contracts and grape-price control, which considerably reduced the regulation power of the CIVC. Nowadays it can only control the quantities produced through the management of planting rights and yields at the harvest, which is completed by a “reserve mechanism”.
This model of economic growth has now reached a dead end with the total surfaces of
the Champagne area planted. The situation is unique in the world and leads to the following
paradox: between 2000 and 2007, sales increased much faster than the production. At first, it allowed to reduce huge stocks, but very quickly it resulted in the inflation of the grape and wine prices. This situation, characterized by a lack of control on prices, was called the prosperity crisis. It led Champagne producers to launch a big project to revise the production area, the homogeneity and coherence of which had long been discussed. This working paper aims at answering the following questions: What led the Champagne producers to launch the revision project? How are they going to proceed? What will be the consequences?

Working Paper No. 63

Published: 2010
Category:
Economics

Understanding Overeating and Obesity

Christopher J. Ruhm
Full Text PDF
Abstract
The combination of economic and biological factors is likely to result in overeating, in the current environment of cheap and readily available food. This propensity is shown using a “dual-decision” approach where choices reflect the interaction between two parts of the brain: a “deliberative” system, operating as in standard economic models, and an “affective” system that responds rapidly to stimuli without considering long-term consequences. This framework is characterized by excess food consumption and body weight, in the sense that individuals prefer both ex-ante and ex-post to eat and weigh less than they actually do, with dieting being common but often unsuccessful or only partially successful. As in the standard model, weight will be related to prices. However, another potentially important reason for rising obesity is that food producers have incentives to engineer products to stimulate the affective system so as to encourage overeating. Data from multiple waves of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys are used to investigate predictions of the dual-decision model, with the evidence providing broad support for at least some irrationality in food consumption.

Working Paper No. 62

Published: 2010
Category:
Business

Comparative Networks and Clusters in the Wine Industry

Andrea Migone & Michael Howlett
Full Text PDF
Abstract
This article addresses the nature of wine clusters in international perspective bringing together two separate literatures, the cluster/networks one and the one on the development of the wine industry, to analyze the mechanisms of innovation that have emerged in the sector. The study of innovation is often linked to economic clusters (Niosi 2005; Wolfe and Lucas 2004a; 2005), both as an analytical tool and as a policy option in the fostering of innovation and development (Feser, Renski, and Goldstein 2008; OECD 1999; 2002; Palazuelos 2005), even if not all effects of clustering are positive (Palazuelos 2005). The wine industry has received extensive attention through the use of cluster analysis (Alvarez 2007; Aylward 2004; Mytelka and Goertzen 2004; McDermott 2007; Hickton and Padmore 2005; Larreina and Aguado 2008). In general terms, clusters have been used in a broad multidisciplinary fashion and the approach has been applied to a host of issues (Boschma 2005; Malmberg and Power 2005) but this has also contributed to a reduction of its analytical sharpness and has fostered the emergence of different meanings for what should be similar concepts (Martin and Sunley 2003; see also Feser, Renski, and Goldstein 2008). However, we believe that cluster and network analysis can be used within the context of a multi-layered approach to the study of innovation policy in the wine industry. Clusters exhibit broad differences among them, by nation, by sector and by analytical approach and alongside them we often find networks. However, clusters and networks are different things with the latter embedded in the former. Both coalesce according to elective affinities, shared goals and layered interests among people. The fact that the clusters analyzed here are market clusters adds a powerful incentive to succeed, but also adds a high sensitivity on initial conditions.
Clusters coalesce geographically, while networks coalesce ideationally. This makes the latter a bit more flexible geographically: for example, global pipelines exist and networks of academics are relatively common if generally show low intensity. The 'quality' of the network embedded in the cluster may be the key to cluster success or at least a strong prerequisite of it (Eisingerich, Bell, and Tracey 2010). Therefore, we also argue that the relative degrees of success enjoyed by the various wine clusters reflect their ability to respond to shocks in the industry and the capacity of the institutional setting in which they exist to channel and foster some of the responses and activities generated by these shocks. Cluster theory offers some important fixed points from which the analysis of these agglomerations of actors can begin. Besides the notion that clusters occupy a (sometimes difficult to define) geographical area, they are internally heterogeneous in terms of the actors that compose them. Along with a broad range of firms (suppliers, service providers, banks, and so forth) we find public entities like universities and government institutions. Actors establish both traded and untraded linkages with one another, and they do so within an area of geographical proximity.i
In our analysis we are also cognizant of the fact that clusters and networks are not the sole level at which the process of innovation develops and that a multilevel approach that would include both regional systems of innovation and the national innovation policy from which many regulation, policy and economic dimensions depend (Aharonson, Baum, and Plunket 2008), is also critical in understanding the deployment of innovation. Regulation is going to affect both cluster structure (for example by creating specific organizations) and network capacity (by affecting the flow and ease of information). Regarding wine clusters, the above-noted characteristics apply with two provisos. First, the wine industry itself is highly dependant on a scarce supply of specific terroirs placed within amenable climatic zones. Second, because tradition and quality are very important, the degree of innovation that the cluster may absorbe could be different from that of other industries.
In the next section, we highlight the literature on innovation, and in section three we deal with the literature on the wine industry. In the successive section we explore the specific nature of the countries that we have chosen as subjects of our analysis: Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the United States, Argentina, Chile, France, Germany, Spain and South Africa. Finally, some conclusions are offered. Our sample covers most of the critically important old world producers, with the exclusion of Italy, and all of the important new world producers. The broad diversity in regulatory, legislative, policy and economic systems ensured by the scope of the sample is necessary to measure the effects these variables have on cluster performance.

Working Paper No. 61

Published: 2010
Category:
Economics

Direct Ship Blowout: How the Supreme Court’s Granholm Decision Has Led to A Flood of Non-Taxed Wine Shipments

John Dunham, Victor Fung Eng & Peter Ronga
Full Text PDF
Abstract
This paper seeks to address the realized decline of tax revenue while the gross revenue sales of wine through direct shipping has increased. The Supreme Court ruling in Granholm v. Heald rendered opinions against state restrictions on out-of-state winery shipments direct to consumers on the basis that the structuring of the state tax policy violated Commerce Clause provisions and blocked ease of entrance into the state market. Based on the model, the interstate sale of wine in the United States rose from 6.2 percent of the market to about 10.4 percent. The evidence presented in the interstate demand model used in this analysis confirms declining tax revenue in opposition to the Court’s conclusions.

Working Paper No. 60

Published: 2010
Category:
Economics

Measuring the Economic Effect of Global Warming on Viticulture Using Auction, Retail and Wholesale Prices.

Orley Ashenfelter & Karl Storchmann
Full Text PDF
Abstract
In this paper we measure the effect of year to year changes in the weather on wine prices and winery revenue in the Mosel Valley in Germany in order to determine the effect that climate change is likely to have on the income of wine growers. A novel aspect of our analysis is that we compare the estimates based on auction, retail, and wholesale prices.
Although auction prices are based on actual transactions, they provide a thick market only for high quality, expensive wines and may overestimate climate’s effect on farmer revenues. Wholesale prices, on the other hand, do provide broad coverage of all wines sold and probably come closest to representing the revenues of farmers. Overall, we estimate a 1°C increase in temperature would yield an increase in farmer revenue of about 30 percent.

Working Paper No. 59

Published: 2010
Category:
Economics

Binge Drinking and Risky Sex among College Students

Jeff DeSimone
Full Text PDF
Abstract
This study examines the relationship between binge drinking and sexual behavior in nationally representative data on age 18–24 four-year college students. For having sex, overall or without condoms, large and significant positive associations are eliminated upon holding constant proxies for time-invariant sexual activity and drinking preferences. However, strong relationships persist for sex with multiple recent partners, overall and without condoms, even controlling for substance use, risk aversion, mental health, sports participation, and sexual activity frequency. Promiscuity is unrelated with non-binge drinking but even more strongly related with binge drinking on multiple occasions. Results from a rudimentary instrumental variables strategy and accounting for whether sex is immediately preceded by alcohol use suggest that binge drinking directly leads to risky sex. Some binge drinking-induced promiscuity seems to occur among students, especially males, involved in long-term relationships. Effects are concentrated among non-Hispanic whites and are not apparent for students in two-year schools.

Working Paper No. 58

Published: 2010
Category:
Economics

Alcohol Regulation and Crime

Christopher Carpenter & Carlos Dobkin
Full Text PDF
Abstract
We provide a critical review of research in economics that has examined causal relationships between alcohol use and crime. We lay out several causal pathways through which alcohol regulation and alcohol consumption may affect crime, including: direct pharmacological effects on aggression, reaction time, and motor impairment; excuse motivations; venues and social interactions; and victimization risk. We focus our review on four main types of alcohol regulations: price/tax restrictions, age-based availability restrictions, spatial availability restrictions, and temporal availability restrictions. We conclude that there is strong evidence that tax- and age-based restrictions on alcohol availability reduce crime, and we discuss implications for policy and practice.

Working Paper No. 57

Published: 2010
Category:
Economics

Raise your Glass: Wine Investment and the Financial Crisis

Philippe Masset & Jean-Philippe Weisskopf
Full Text PDF
Abstract
This paper uses auction hammer prices over the period 1996-2009, with a special emphasis on periods of economic downturns, to examine risk, return and diversification benefits of fine wine. Our research shows evidence that the wine market is heterogeneous with wine regions and price categories evolving differently in terms of volume and turnover. We construct wine indices for various wine regions and prices using repeat-sales regressions and find out that fine wine yields higher returns and has a lower volatility compared to stocks especially in times of economic crises. Forming portfolios for typical investors and taking risk aversion, different financial assets and various wine indices into consideration we confirm that the addition of wine to a portfolio as a separate asset-class is beneficial for private investors. Not only are returns favourably impacted and risk being minimised but skewness and kurtosis are also positively affected. Particularly, during the recent financial crisis these effects are most pronounced and improve portfolio diversification when it is most needed. Most importantly, balancing a portfolio with fine wine has resulted in added return while reducing volatility with the most prestigious and expensive vintages and estates outperforming the General Wine Index (GWI) during the entire research period. Results from the CAPM show that alpha is significantly positive over the period 1996- 2009 while showing a low beta coefficient. The use of a conditional CAPM model allows us to clarify the time-variance of alphas and betas depending on the economic environment that is not generally captured by the traditional CAPM. The time-varying dynamics of alphas and betas are in particular best explained by the spread between BAA- and AAA-rated bonds and the USD/EUR foreign exchange rate. Our findings confirm that wine returns are primarily related to economic conditions and not to the market risk.

Working Paper No. 56

Published: 2010
Category:
Economics

The Effects of Relative Food Prices on Obesity – Evidence from China: 1991-2006

Yang Lu and Dana Goldman
Full Text PDF
Abstract
This paper explores the effects of relative food prices on body weight and body fat over time in China. We study a cohort of 15,000 adults from over 200 communities in China, using the longitudinal China Health and Nutrition Survey (1991-2006). While we find that decreases in the price of energy-dense foods have consistently led to elevated body fat, this price effect does not always hold for body weight. These findings suggest that changes in food consumption patterns induced by varying food prices can increase percentage body fat to risky levels even without substantial weight gain. In addition, food prices and subsidies could be used to encourage healthier food consumption patterns and to curb obesity.

Working Paper No. 55

Published: 2010
Category:
Economics

In Vino Veritas: Signaling and Drinking

Jan Heufer
Full Text PDF
Abstract
Social drinking is widespread in many areas of the world, and there is at least anecdotal evidence that participation in moderate consumption within a social context can be bene cial for individuals.1 It is argued in this paper that social drug consumption, in particular alcohol drinking, can be used directly to partially reveal a player’s personality, in particular his trustworthiness, and, in a separating equilibrium, can serve as a credible signal. A drug is thought of as a technology which can be used to voluntarily give up some degree of control over one’s action and words; if this consumption takes place within a social context both the consumption itself and the drug-induced behavior is observable.
While the revelation of truth a er the consumption of alcohol is proverbial in many cultures, it su ces for the idea of this paper that the observation of alcohol-induced behavior can be used to better estimate a person’s personality type, or that alcohol as a “social lubricant” heightens social interaction.2 If alcohol can be used to give others better information about one’s personality, the social consumption of alcohol can bene t those who would like to honestly reveal their type. For example, if players play a game of trust, a trustworthy person might su er a subjective disutility from exploiting trust and therefore choose to reward trust. If his trustworthiness is common knowledge, this player would be trusted by others if this leads to a higher payo for both. If his trustworthiness is not observable, other players might not be willing to take the risk of trusting him. e trustworthy player, therefore, has an incentive to employ alcohol in order to credibly reveal information about himself. A non-trustworthy player may not be willing to imitate the behavior of the trustworthy players.3
In general, many di erent drugs are potential signals. If intoxication is associated with a loss of productivity, e.g. a reduction in the pie which is to be split up, there is a natural trade o between the gains due to revelation of trustworthiness and the decrease in productivity. If the drug is highly addictive, it would also be used out of the social context, a use which is only unproductive.
Besides being useful to obtain a better estimate of someone’s type, a suitable drug should therefore i) be not addictive for moderate consumption, ii) have only short term e ects, iii) allow a gradual degree of loss of control which can be easily observed and reciprocated by others. Alcohol satis es these requirements.
If it is e cient for a society to employ a universal, exclusive technology, then it is e cient to coordinate on one drug. Laws or social norms can then be used to enforce the use of only one technology that is well suited for the purpose. is can help to explain why alcohol is legal in many countries, whereas other drugs which are just as harmful or even less harmful from a medically point of view are illegal.4
Furthermore, competing suppliers of signaling technologies such as religions have incentives to discourage drug use. is can help to explain why many religions recommend or require abstinence.
From a modelling point of view, the approach in this paper is also novel: We model the strategic improvement of the informational content of a noisy exogenous signal (similar to the one used in Frank 1987).
e rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section 2 gives a simple example of a game of trust in which trustworthy players employ a drug to reveal their type. Section 3 introduces a more detailed model with a noisy exogenous signal. Section 4 analyzes the model when the noisy signal is normally distributed. It is shown that both separating and pooling equilibria can arise. In a separating equilibrium, only the trustworthy types consume the drug. e pooling equilibrium di ers from usual pooling equilibria considered in the literature on asymmetric information: Both types of players consume the same amount of the drug, but this behavior is nonetheless informative. Long run evolutionary stable equilibria of type distributions are considered. Section 5 discusses the results of the model and possible extensions. Section 6 concludes.

Working Paper No. 54

Published: 2010
Category:
Economics

Calorie Posting in Chain Restaurants

Bryan Bollinger, Phillip Leslie & Alan Sorensen
Full Text PDF
Abstract
We study the impact of mandatory calorie posting on consumers’ purchase decisions, using detailed data from Starbucks. We find that average calories per transaction falls by 6%. The effect is almost entirely related to changes in consumers’ food choices—there is almost no change in purchases of beverage calories. There is no impact on Starbucks profit on average, and for the subset of stores located close to their competitor Dunkin Donuts, the effect of calorie posting is actually to increase Starbucks revenue. Survey evidence and analysis of commuters suggest the mechanism for the effect is a combination of learning and salience.

Working Paper No. 53

Published: 2009
Category:
Economics

Healthy School Meals and Educational Outcomes

Michèle Belot & Jonathan James
Full Text PDF
Abstract
This paper provides field evidence on the effects of diet on educational outcomes, exploiting a campaign lead in the UK in 2004, which introduced drastic changes in the meals, offered in the schools of one Borough – Greenwich - shifting from low-budget processed meals towards healthier options. We evaluate the effect of the campaign on educational outcomes in primary schools using a difference in differences approach; comparing educational outcomes in primary schools (key stage 2 outcomes more specifically) before and after the reform, using the neighbouring Local Education Authorities as a control group. We find evidence that educational outcomes did improve significantly in English and Science. We also find that the campaign lead to a 15% fall in authorised absences – which are most likely linked to illness and health.

Working Paper No. 52

Published: 2009
Category:
Business

From Wine Production to Wine Tourism Experience: the Case of Italy

Vincenzo Asero & Sebastiano Patti
Full Text PDF
Abstract

Typical products, mainly local food and wine, are considered suitable features to characterise the tourist supply of a destination and in many cases they are a major attraction of a territory. These products contain a strong reference to the territory in which they are produced. They simultaneously represent on the market a geographic area, its traditions and its cultural heritage, they identify a local community and its identity as well. Therefore typical products can be defined as ‘territorial intensive products’ (TIPs). Wine tourism represents the most innovative phenomenon of the more general tourism supply created around a TIP and certainly the most evident. The paper considers the importance of quality wine in Italy in helping to create the tourist supply of different territories through the creation of the Wine and Food Routes (WFRs) that represent a particular kind of tourist thematic itineraries. The paper confirms that quality wines are the ‘driver’ of WFRs creating a model of socioeconomic district.

Working Paper No. 51

Published: 2009
Category:
Economics

Expert opinion and cuisine reputation in the market for restaurant meals

James J. Fogarty
Full Text PDF
Abstract
As food is an experience good, the market for restaurant meals is a market where the cost of acquiring information regarding quality is relatively high. In such markets consumers often turn to reputation measures to guide purchase decisions. As Australia does not have a longstanding cuisine style of its own, and given Australia has been open to substantial immigration inflows since federation, it represents an especially appropriate market to study regarding the impact of individual restaurant reputation and collective cuisine reputation on meal prices. The following study uses the hedonic price approach to investigate the implicit price of individual reputation indicators, cuisine type reputation indicators, and other objective indicators in the market for restaurant meals. The empirical findings presented suggest that both individual restaurant reputation and cuisine type reputation are important. Other important factors are shown to include the quality of the restaurant wine list, the availability of private dining rooms, and whether or not there is an outdoor dining option.

Working Paper No. 50

Published: 2009
Category:
Economics

The economics of collective reputation: minimum quality standards, vertical differentiation and optimal group size

Stefano Castriota & Marco Delmastro
Full Text PDF
Abstract

The literature on collective reputation is still in its infancy. Despite a number of valuable theoretical works studying the process of collective reputation building, due to data limitations there are no studies testing the determinants of group reputation. This work represents a first empirical step in this direction. Control variables range from the context in which firms operate to the quality standards set by the coalition, from the variables measuring the vertical and horizontal differentiation to the characteristics of the group. Our research provides empirical support in favor of the usefulness of compulsory and voluntary quality standards. Furthermore, it shows that the relationship between group size and collective reputation is non-linear: free entry may be not optimal since above a certain number of producers the group reputation declines due to free-riding problems.

Working Paper No. 49

Published: 2009
Category:
Economics

The Economics of Nested Names: Name Specificity, Reputations, and Price Premia

Marco Costanigro, Jill J. McCluskey & Christopher Goemans
Full Text PDF
Abstract
We study how reputation price premia are obtained in markets for experience goods and how they are associated with names identifying products with increasing specificity (nested names), such as region-of- origin, brand and product names. A model of price variation as a function of historical quality performance is estimated via quantile regression. Findings include that multiple factors, in addition to past average quality, influence the magnitude of the premia. These premia migrate from aggregate names to more specific ones as the consequences of experiencing poor quality overcome the cost of forming detailed quality expectations. The application is the California wine industry.

Working Paper No. 48

Published: 2009
Category:
Economics

Introducing wine into grocery stores: Economic implications and transitional issues

Bradley J. Rickard
Full Text PDF
Abstract
There has been a long history of government regulation related to wine marketing activities in the United States, and many regulations have been state-specific. For example, fifteen states currently have laws that restrict wine sales in grocery stores. Several of these states have recently proposed changes that would expand the distribution of wine; however, the economic implications of such changes are not well understood and the proposals have met significant resistance from key stakeholders. A simulation model is developed here to assess the likely effects of introducing wine into grocery stores in New York State. Results suggest that benefits would be generated for out-of- state wineries, government revenues, and in most cases the in-state wineries; wine sales at liquor stores would fall by 17% to 32% with this policy change. Simulation results are subsequently used to develop a framework for evaluating various proposals that would provide compensation to liquor store owners.

Working Paper No. 47

Published: 2009
Category:
Business

The E-mail Responsiveness of Italian Wineries

Riccardo Vecchio
Full Text PDF
Abstract
The promises of the Internet as a platform for reaching new outlets, markets of global dimensions, intimate customer relationships, low cost and streamlined distribution chains have largely been disappointing in the wine industry. This paper draws on an e-mail commercial survey to investigate web customer service offered by 300 wine companies across Italy. The overall feedback rate was 55%. The main problem of these firms was the inability to respond to customer inquiries in a timely and informative fashion. In particular, only 18% of these wineries responded within four hours, 37% responded within 12 hours. There are also significant differences in response rates by regional business location.

Working Paper No. 46

Published: 2009
Category:
Business

Innovation in the Chilean Wine Industry: The Impact of Foreign Direct Investments and Entrepreneurship on Competitiveness

Martin Kunc & Tomas G. Bas
Full Text PDF
Abstract
In this paper, we present the evolutionary path occurred in the Chilean Wine industry generated by learning-by-imitation processes occurred after foreign direct investments improved few existing firms as well as created new firms. This process of learning-by-imitation was fostered by the development of knowledge networks and the arrival of highly qualified entrepreneurs.

Working Paper No. 45

Published: 2009
Category:
Economics

Grazing, Goods and Girth: Determinants and Effects

Daniel S. Hamermesh
Full Text PDF
Abstract
Using the 2006-07 American Time Use Survey and its Eating and Health Module, I show that over half of adult Americans report grazing (secondary eating/drinking) on a typical day, with grazing time almost equaling primary eating/drinking time. An economic model predicts that higher wage rates (price of time) will lead to substitution of grazing for primary eating/drinking, especially by raising the number of grazing incidents relative to meals. This prediction is confirmed in these data. Eating meals more frequently is associated with lower BMI and better self-reported health, as is grazing more frequently. Food purchases are positively related to time spent eating—substitution of goods for time is difficult—but are lower when eating time is spread over more meals.

Working Paper No. 44

Published: 2009
Category:
Business

The Value of Designations of Origin in Emilia-Romagna

Silvia Gatti
Full Text PDF
Abstract
The determination of the absolute value of a good is a primary need of each individual, and is historically at the basis of economic theory.
David Ricardo, in the Essay on the Low Price of Corn on the Profits of Stock of 1815 (Ricardo, 1951b, p.9), writes, “Wherever competition can have its full effect, and the production of commodity be not limited by nature, as is the case with some wines, the difficulty or facility of their production will ultimately regulate their exchangeable value”. “The ‘difficulty’ or ‘facility’ of production is judged on the basis of the amount of labour required,” summarizes Fernando Vianello on page XVI of his Italian Introduction to Ricardo’s On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (1976). “If commodities are exchanged in proportion to the labour embodied, a commodity always produced by the same quantity of labour meets the requirements of a perfect measure of value” (Vianello, 1976, p. XVIII). Therefore in Ricardo, “The ‘absolute value’ of a commodity always produced by the same quantity of labour is invariable – even though its ‘exchange value’ or ‘relative value’ may change – in the sense that the commodity itself is not subject to that sole cause of variation of the value that acts on other commodities: the variation in the quantity of labour required for their production.” (Vianello, 1976, p. XVIII).
Ricardo’s labour theory of value made it possible – both in the early 19th century and today – to give clear solutions to the role of money (Vianello, 1976, p. XVIII) and rent (Vianello, 1976, p. XXII).
In Italy the lesson of classical economists, combined with the lesson of Schumpeter, was reworked by Sylos Labini both to provide an innovative answer to the theoretical problems of economic analysis (Sylos Labini, 1956) and to offer a direct study tool for the country’s industrial transformations from the 1960s up to today (Sylos Labini, 1972).

Working Paper No. 43

Published: 2009
Category:
Business

Non-conventional viticulture as a viable system: A case study in Italy

Antonella Vastola & Aysen Tanyeri-Abur
Full Text PDF
Abstract
The food crisis of 2008 and the current financial crisis, coupled with concerns of climate change, have fueled a renewed interest in alternative food production systems, namely,
local, organic and sustainable food systems. In many countries, firms are revising not only their short run objectives, but also their medium and long term goals. Most developed economies have identified the adoption of environmentally sustainable technologies as a major building block of the strategy to exit the crisis (Agrisole, 2009). Therefore, the adoption of sustainable technologies and the production of environmentally friendly goods and services is poised to be a crucial competitive tool in the global marketplace in the medium-long run (Agrisole, 2009). Non-conventional production and processing methods – e.g. organic and biodynamic techniques – provide important positive social and environmental externallitiies, and may offer viable alternative to traditional production systems, particularly in terms of coping strategies in times of crisis.

Working Paper No. 42

Published: 2009
Category:
Economics

Message on the Bottle: Colours and Shapes of Wine Labels

Luiz de Mello & Ricardo Pires
Full Text PDF
Abstract
Wine consumers rely mainly on the label on the bottle to infer the quality of its content. But there is little empirical research on how colours can be interacted with shapes in the design of wine labels. This study draws from an experiment using data from Spain and shows that there are strong preferences for selected colour-shape combinations in label design. Surprisingly, colour alone does not elicit as strong preferences as certain shapes do, at least when they are assessed irrespectively of the shapes featured in the label. Other combinations, on the other hand, are very resilient, especially those that contain colour hues, such as brown, yellow, black and green, in labels with salient rectangular and hexagonal patterns.

Working Paper No. 41

Published: 2009
Category:
Business

Increasing domestic consumption of South African wines: Identifying the key market segments of the “Black Diamonds”

Leah Z.B. Ndanga, André Louw & Johan van Rooyen
Full Text PDF
Abstract
Although South Africans are not predominantly wine drinkers, the industry is looking for ways to develop the local market to balance exports. The black middle class, increasingly referred to as the Black Diamonds are the most powerful marketing trend in the last 10 years as they have emerged as the strongest buying influence in the economy and making inroads in understanding this market presents a good opportunity. The study asserts that the key factors influencing the South African consumers’ behavior are age, gender, income, race and wine drinking history. The study also asserts that not only are the black middle class are different from the white middle class but within the Black Diamonds different segments exist. The industry should particularly focus on marketing to the women and the “Start me up” age group in the group as there is limited consumer knowledge about wines, but a high willingness to experiment. The study also suggests various new brand communication platforms that can be explored to reach this market as well as co-opetition between industry stakeholders.

Working Paper No. 40

Published: 2009
Category:
Economics

Quality Sorting and Trade: Firm-Level Evidence for French Wine

Matthieu Crozet, Keith Head & Thierry Mayer
Full Text PDF
Abstract
Quality sorting and trade: Firm-level evidence for French wine Investigations of the effect of quality differences on heterogeneous performance in exporting have been limited by lack of direct measures of quality. We examine exports of French wine, matching the exporting firms to producer ratings from two wine guides. We show that high quality producers export to more markets, charge higher prices, and sell more in each market. More attractive markets are served by exporters that, on average, make lower rated Champagne. Market attractiveness has a weakly negative effect on prices and a strongly positive effect on quantities, confirming the sign predictions of a simple quality sorting model.
Methodologically, we make several contributions to the literature. First, we propose an estimation method for regressions of firm-level exports on ability measures and use Monte Carlo simulations to show that it corrects a severe selection bias present in OLS estimates. Second, we show how the means of quality, price, and quantity for exporters to a given market can be used to recover estimates of core parameters (which we compare with firm-level estimates) and discriminate between productivity and quality-sorting versions of the Melitz model. Our new method regresses country means on an index of each country's attractiveness and the fixed costs of entering it. We compare our method, which utilizes explanatory variables estimated in the firm-level regressions, to the conventional approach that relies on a reduced-form relationship with proxies for attractiveness and fixed costs.

Working Paper No. 39

Published: 2009
Category:
Economics

How Large Are Non-Budget-Constraint Effects of Prices on Demand?

Ori Heffetz & Moses Shayo
Full Text PDF
Abstract
Elementary consumer theory assumes that prices affect demand only because they affect the budget constraint (BC). By contrast, several models suggest that prices can affect demand through other channels (e.g. because they signal quality). This alternative conjecture is consistent with evidence from marketing studies. However, neither theory nor evidence is informative regarding the magnitude of non-BC effects. The key econometric challenge arises from the fact that a change in prices typically also changes the BC. This paper uses a lab and a field experiment to disentangle BC from non-BC effects of prices on demand. In our lab experiment we find that, consistent with marketing evidence, prices positively affect stated willingness to pay. However, when examining actual demand, non-BC price elasticities are considerably smaller than BC price elasticities and are often statistically insignificant. Further, these non-BC elasticities do not increase with product uncertainty. Finally, we do not detect any non-BC effects in our field experiment.

Working Paper No. 38

Published: 2009
Category:
Economics

Political Economy of Anglo-French Trade, 1689-1899: Agricultural Trade Policies, Alcohol Taxes, and War

John V.C. Nye
Full Text PDF
Abstract
Britain – contrary to received wisdom – was not a free trader for most of the 1800s and, despite repeal of the Corn Laws, continued to have higher tariffs than the French until the last quarter of the century.
War with Louis XIV from 1689 led to the end of all trade between Britain and France for a quarter of a century. The creation of powerful protected interests both at home and abroad (notably in the form of British merchants, and investors in Portuguese wine) led to the imposition of prohibitively high tariffs on French imports -- notably on wine and spirits -- when trade with France resumed in 1714. Protection of domestic interests from import competition allowed the state to raise domestic excises which provided increased government revenues despite almost no increases in the taxes on land and income in Britain. The state ensured compliance not simply through the threat of lower tariffs on foreign substitutes but also through the encouragement of a trend towards monopoly production in brewing and restricted retail sales of beer (which began around 1700 and continued throughout the eighteenth century).
This history is analyzed in terms of its effects on British fiscal and commercial policy from the early 1700s to the end of the nineteenth century. The result is a fuller, albeit revisionist account of the rise of the modern state that calls into question a variety of theses in economics and political science that draw on the naive view of a liberal Britain unilaterally moving to free trade in the nineteenth century.

Working Paper No. 37

Published: 2009
Category:
Law

Taxation of Alcohol and Consumer Attitude is the ECJ Sober?

Theodore Georgopoulos
Full Text PDF
Abstract
Taxation of wine and beer has been the frequent subject of litigation before the European Court of Justice (ECJ) in the light of the second paragraph of Article 90.1 The distinction between beer and wine is recognized as being of capital importance by the European legislator. Directives 92/83/EEC and 92/84/EEC apply different rules to beer and wine in terms of excise duties.2 The popularity of these alcoholic beverages partially explains this interest, but it is their differences which are crucial to their tax treatment. In Case C-167/05, the Court was once again called to give answers to the question of taxation of wine and beer in the light of Article 90. Contrary to the Opinion of the Advocate General, the ECJ’s judgment of April 8, 2008, dismissed as unfounded the Commission’s action for infringement of Community law by Swedish law. According to the Commission’s allegations, Swedish tax regulations on alcohol discriminated against wine (an imported beverage) in favor of beer (a widely nationally-produced product).
« Previous Page1 Page2 Page3 Page4 Page5 Page6 Page7 Page8 Page9 Page10 Next »

Submission

Please send your papers as PDF files to the editor, Victor Ginsburgh, at vginsbur@ulb.ac.be
Papers will be quickly reviewed, prior to potential posting on the website. Decision will be to post or not, possibly with short comments, but without referee reports. The decision will be based primarily on the suitability of the paper’s topic to the aims of the Association.
Such decisions are independent of publication decisions for the Journal of Wine Economics.

Working Paper publication requires that at least one author
is a regular member of AAWE.

Subscribe to our Email List

You can cancel your subscription at any time.
SUBSCRIBE HERE

Contact

AAWE
Economics Department
New York University
19 W. 4th Street, 6FL
New York, NY 10012, U.S.A.
Tel: (212) 992-8083
Fax: (212) 995-4186
E-Mail: karl.storchmann@nyu.edu

AAWE

Journal

Working Papers as a List

Membership

Videos

LINKS

Fifthsense

JWE at Cambridge University Press

Liquid Assets

Stuart Pigott

Privacy & Cookies Policy

Privacy Policy

Cookies Policy

Twitter Facebook-f Youtube

© AAWE 2021 - All rights reserved