Tài liệu NATURAL ENDOWMENTS, PRODUCTION TECHNOLOGIES AND THE QUALITY OF WINES IN BORDEAUX. IS IT

AMERICAN ASSOCIATION

OF WINE ECONOMISTS

AAWE WORKING PAPER

No. 2

Editor

Victor

Ginsburgh

NATURAL ENDOWMENTS,

PRODUCTION TECHNOLOGIES AND

THE QUALITY OF WINES IN

BORDEAUX. IS IT POSSIBLE TO

PRODUCE WINE ON PAVED ROADS?

Olivier Gergaud

Victor Ginsburgh

April 2007 www.wine-economics.org

AAWE

Working Paper No. 2

Natural endowments, production technologies

and the quality of wines in Bordeaux.

Is it possible to produce wine on paved roads?*

Olivier Gergaud

OMI, Université de Reims Champagne-Ardenne and

TEAM, Université de Paris I

Victor Ginsburgh

ECARES, Université Libre de Bruxelles and

CORE, Université catholique de Louvain

August 2005

Abstract

We 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). However, since technological

choices are likely to depend on endowments, the effects can only be identified using an

instrumental variables approach. We show that technological choices affect quality much

more than natural endowments, the effect of which is negligible.

We are grateful to Orley Ashenfelter for his suggestion to rework on the Ginsburgh, Monzak and

Monzak (1994) paper, as well as to Christophe Croux, Marcelo Fernandez, Abdul Noury, Loic

Sadoulet, Peter Spencer, Etienne Wasmer and especially Catherine Dehon, for fruitful discussions on

instrumental and less instrumental variables and for comments on a previous version.

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