Vinets ekonomi – nya forskningsrön

Kan en välkänd vinexpert påverka priset på dyra viner? Hur viktig är egentligen geografin i förhållande till teknologin för vinets kvalitet? Varför spelar inte väderförhållanden eller vinproducenten någon roll för omogna viners priser medan de förklarar nästan hela prisnivån efter det att vinerna mognat?

Svaren på dessa intressanta frågor står att finna i juni-numret av den brittiska nationalekonomiska tidskriften Economic Journal. I tre artiklar granskas vinets och vinframställningens ekonomi, där forskarna m h a omfattande datamaterial och sofistikerade statistiska analyser försöker utröna om vinmarknaden fungerar som det ska eller inte (se fortsättningen på inlägget nedan).

För mer lättillgängliga översikter till vinets ekonomi kan man besöka denna tyska hemsida och för lite mer ingående om oenometri (ekonomisk analys av viner) bör man gå hit American Association of Wine Economists.

Så här sammanfattas de tre EJ-artiklarna av numrets redaktörer:

Quality is the linking theme for the three articles in this Feature on wine: how might one predict wine quality (Ashenfelter); how technology and physical endowments affect the quality (Gergaud and Ginsburgh); and how might expert judgments on wine quality affect prices (Ali, Lecocq and Visser).

Ashenfelter combines an enthusiasm for wine with tools of economics to create a wine rating system using a formula based strictly on two variables: temperature and rainfall. Utilising years of weather data, he concludes that dry, warm weather produces the best wines. According to Ashenfelter ‘predicting the quality and price of a wine could be like predicting any other market item’.

Gergaud and Ginsburgh study whether quality assessments made by wine experts and by consumers (based on prices obtained at auction between 1980 and 1992), can be explained by variables describing endowments (land characteristics, exposures of vineyards) and technologies (from grape varieties and picking, to bottled wines). They find that, since technological choices typically depend on endowments, the effects can only be identified using an instrumental variables approach. The controversial conclusion from this article is that technological choices affect quality far more than natural endowments, including terroir, the effects of which on wine quality is negligible.

The final article by Ali, Lecocq and Visser, measures the impact of Robert Parker’s oenological grades on en primeur Bordeaux wine prices (i.e. the prices established by the château owners when the wines are still extremely young). By exploiting an unusual reversal in 2003 in the order of the establishment of en primeur wine prices and the publication of the Parker wine grades, they have estimated an average Parker effect of 2.80 euros per bottle of wine. They also estimate grade-specific effects, and use these estimates to predict what the prices would have been had Parker attended the spring tastings in 2003.

AB1 AB2 AB3 SydSv DN DN2 DN3 AlltomMat Afv 

Hat tip: Andrew Leigh