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The Role of Individual Risk Attitudes on Old Wine Valuations
Abstract
In this article, we report the results of an experiment designed to address the effect of risk attitudes on valuations of aged wines. We find that higher risk taking in the economic domain is associated with a significantly higher willingness to pay for an old wine. Given the increasing interest of consumers and investors in old wines, our results are applicable to the pricing of old wines and to the use of auctions as an efficient willingness to pay elicitation mechanism. (JEL Classifications: C91, D44, L66)
... Hence, the wine age effect seems to have a particularly strong impact on traders driven by emotional motivations, who regularly trade at auctions and search for unique bottles of old wines. As revealed by Georgantzís and Tisserand (2019), risk-taking is positively associated with a willingness to pay for old wine. ...
This article examines how selected attributes of Bordeaux fine wines (producer, vintage, quality, bottle size, case, flaws, and transaction volume) affect prices in three types of trading venues: auctions, electronic exchange, and the over-the-counter (OTC) market. The findings indicate a price differentiation across the venues. Wine aging leads to relatively higher prices at auctions than on the electronic exchange or the OTC. There is a nearly linear relationship between prices and wine ratings, the strongest of which is found in the case of auctions. The bottle size effect is mostly positive for supersized formats and is the strongest on an electronic exchange and the weakest at auctions. The transaction volume negatively affects wine prices in all the trading venues. The simulation results facilitate the construction of more realistic trading models and may help traders make more informed decisions on the choice of a trading venue, depending on the wine characteristics. (JEL Classifications: D40, G12, Q14, L66)
... Since the quality of a bottle of wine is unknown to the potential buyer before consumption, there is a growing body of literature on various aspects of perceived risk (Georgantzis and Tisserand, 2019). Like for other experience goods (Ashton, 2014), wine purchase decisions draw on consumers' use of prior knowledge and experience, and various product cues (Gustavsen and Rickertsen, 2019). ...
This paper analyzes buying decisions when consumers consider that a bottle of wine may be cork-tainted. Drawing on a sample of 804 subjects, we examine the role of gender, price level, and subjects’ country of origin and study consumer behavior and their personal cork-taint risk assessments. We find that women assess the cork-taint risk higher than men but are still more likely to buy bottles with cork closures. Young consumers from Asia are more risk-averse than people from Western countries. Gender and regional differences vanish for wines in higher price brackets.
In this conceptual article, we propose to investigate the intrinsic motivations of wine appreciation platform user communities, such as Vivino. By helping to reduce the stress linked to the complexity of the purchasing and tasting experience, which we call wine stress, these technologies increase the pleasure of participating in the community and gamify the sharing of knowledge via the platform. At the same time, exposing the user both to social exposure within the community of wine enthusiasts, and thus to peer judgment, but also to cognitive dissonance in the tasting experience.
We analyze the results from three different risk attitude elicitation methods. First, the broadly used test by Holt and Laury (2002), HL, second, the lottery-panel task by Sabater-Grande and Georgantzis (2002), SG, and third, responses to a survey question on self-assessment of general attitude towards risk (Dohmen et al. 2011). The first and the second task are implemented with real monetary incentives, while the third concerns all domains in life in general. Like in previous studies, the correlation of decisions across tasks is low and usually statistically non-significant. However, when we consider only subjects whose behavior across the panels of the SG task is compatible with constant relative risk aversion (CRRA), the correlation between HL and self-assessed risk attitude becomes significant. Furthermore, the correlation between HL and SG also increases for CRRA-compatible subjects, although it remains statistically non-significant.
This study examines the use of wine futures (i.e., advance selling of wine before it is bottled) as a form of operational flexibility to mitigate quality rating risk. At the end of a harvest season, the winemaker obtains a certain number of barrels of wine that can be produced for a particular vintage. While the wine is aging in the barrel, expert reviewers taste the wine and create a barrel score, indicating the potential quality of the wine and offering clues as to whether, when bottled, it will be superior wine. Based on the barrel score, the wine producer determines (1) the percentage of its wine to be sold as futures and (2) the price of the wine futures. After one more year of aging, the wine is bottled, and the reviewers provide a second review of the wine and assign a bottle score that influences the market price of the wine. Our study makes three contributions. First, we develop an analytical model that incorporates uncertain consumer valuations of wine futures and bottled wine and the uncertain bottle rating that is assigned to the wine at the end of the production process. Our analysis provides insights into how the barrel score, consumer preference (through a conditional-value-at-risk perspective) and the winemaker's preference influence the winemaker's allocation and pricing decisions. Our second contribution relates to the impact of consumer heterogeneity on the optimal allocation and pricing decisions. Contrary to common belief that the winemaker may be better off when consumers are more homogeneous, our results demonstrate that the winemaker can achieve a higher level of profitability when the market is filled with consumers that are heterogeneous. Third, we test our findings using data collected from Bordeaux wineries engaging in wine futures. Our empirical analysis demonstrates that (1) barrel scores play a significant role in the two decisions regarding the quantity and price of wine futures, and (2) the wine futures market provides a sizable financial benefit to the winemakers. Our analysis yields recommendations for artisanal and boutique wineries that have limited or no experience selling wine futures.
Recent research invokes preference imprecision to explain violations of individual decision theory. While these inquiries are suggestive, the nature and significance of such imprecision remain poorly understood. We explore three questions using a new measurement tool in an experimental investigation of imprecision in lottery valuations: Does such preference imprecision vary coherently with lottery structure? Is it stable on repeat measurement? Does it have explanatory value for economic behaviour? We find that imprecision behaves coherently, shows no tendency to change systematically with experience, is related to choice variability, but is not a main driver of the violations of standard decision theory that we consider.
We analyze experimental data obtained from an ultimatum game framed as a situation of employee–employer negotiation over salaries. Parallel to this, we elicit subjects’ risk attitudes. In the existing literature, it has often been conjectured that gender differences in strategic environments are partly due to differences in risky decision making. Our evidence suggests that both gender and risk-related effects co-exist in ultimatum bargaining. However, differences in risk attitudes cannot explain gender effects in ultimatum bargaining.
We present a psychometric scale that assesses risk taking in five content domains: financial decisions (separately for investing versus gambling), health/safety, recreational, ethical, and social decisions. Respondents rate the likelihood that they would engage in domain-specific risky activities (Part I). An optional Part II assesses respondents’ perceptions of the magnitude of the risks and expected benefits of the activities judged in Part I. The scale’s construct validity and consistency is evaluated for a sample of American undergraduate students. As expected, respondents’ degree of risk taking was highly domain-specific, i.e. not consistently risk-averse or consistently risk-seeking across all content domains. Women appeared to be more risk-averse in all domains except social risk. A regression of risk taking (likelihood of engaging in the risky activity) on expected benefits and perceived risks suggests that gender and content domain differences in apparent risk taking are associated with differences in the perception of the activities’ benefits and risk, rather than with differences in attitude towards perceived risk.
We examine the properties of a popular method for eliciting choices and values from experimental subjects, the multiple price
list format. The main advantage of this format is that it is relatively transparent to subjects and provides simple incentives
for truthful revelation. The main disadvantages are that it only elicits interval responses, and could be susceptible to framing
effects. We consider extensions to address and evaluate these concerns. We conclude that although there are framing effects,
they can be controlled for with a design that allows for them. We also find that the elicitation of risk attitudes is sensitive
to procedures, subject pools, and the format of the multiple price list table, but that the qualitative findings that participants
are generally risk averse is robust. The elicitation of discount rates appear less sensitive to details of the experimental
design.
We present a new experimental evidence of how framing affects decisions in the context of a lottery choice experiment for
measuring risk aversion. We investigate framing effects by replicating the Holt and Laury’s (Am. Econ. Rev. 92:1644–1655,
2002) procedure for measuring risk aversion under various frames. We first examine treatments where participants are confronted
with the 10 decisions to be made either simultaneously or sequentially. The second treatment variable is the order of appearance of the ten lottery pairs. Probabilities of winning are ranked either
in increasing, decreasing, or in random order. Lastly, payoffs were increased by a factor of ten in additional treatments. The rate of inconsistencies was significantly
higher in sequential than in simultaneous treatment, in increasing and random than in decreasing treatment. Both experience
and salient incentives induce a dramatic decrease in inconsistent behaviors. On the other hand, risk aversion was significantly
higher in sequential than in simultaneous treatment, in decreasing and random than in increasing treatment, in high than in
low payoff condition. These findings suggest that subjects use available information which has no value for normative theories,
like throwing a glance at the whole connected set of pairwise choices before making each decision in a connected set of lottery
pairs.
KeywordsRisk aversion–Lottery choice experiment–Framing effects–Experience effects–Incentive effects
We present an experiment designed to study the psychological basis for the willingness to accept (WTA)–willingness to pay (WTP) gap. Specifically, we conduct a standard WTA–WTP economic experiment to replicate the gap and include in it five additional instruments to try to follow the psychological processes producing it. These instruments are designed to measure five psychological constructs we consider especially relevant: (1) attitudes, (2) feelings, (3) familiarity with the target good, (4) risk attitudes, and (5) personality. Our results provide important new insights into the psychological foundations of the WTA–WTP disparity, which can be used to organize some major previous results and cast serious doubts on the claim that the gap might be just a consequence of inappropriate experimental practice.
This paper examines the social effects of fair trade transactions emerging from policies to expand the market around the globe. Focusing on the case of coffee farmers in Guatemala, it examines tensions that are created in local organisational networks linked to production, processing and certification of fair trade organic coffee and how these tensions fracture and fragment the life worlds of these coffee farmers. While the fair trade market has provided positive opportunities for rural producers the research finds that network separation and market exclusion are also social expressions of involvement in fair trade. It is argued that fair trade policies need to reflect a more nuanced understanding of household and community level consequences of production for the fair trade market. Copyright � 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Information conveyed on the price tag or label of a consumable packaged good is widely thought to change the consumer's sensory experience of consuming the good. Can the positive “placebo” effects of high prices and negative “nocebo” effects of low prices on consumer experience be isolated and observed in a controlled experiment without using deception? In a pilot wine experiment using a method I call “half-blind tasting,” I observe that the nocebo response to a 50 price tag. To interpret these preliminary results, I borrow some insights from prospect theory. (JEL Classifications: C91, D81, L66, M31, Q11)
This paper studies the risk attitudes of winegrowers in France. In French viticulture, most of the production is done under an appellation regime that constrains maximum authorized yields. We consider a trans-log cost function under the constraint of this maximum yield and estimate winegrowers' attitudes to risk. Our estimates are based on the European Farm Accountancy Data Network database (2005–2014) and data from the French National Institute of Origin and Quality. We find that winegrowers are risk averse. For the majority of winegrowers, risk aversion is declining with expected profit. In the Champagne region, however, where expected profits are far higher than in the other regions, we observe the reverse relation: winegrowers become more risk averse as expected profits rise. (JEL Classifications: C13, C33, O33, Q16).
The U.S. and global beer industries include a great many smaller-scale craft breweries supplying numerous differentiated products as well as a few macro-breweries with less diverse beer portfolios. The craft and macro segments of this industry have become quite distinct, with little substitutability between the two types of beer. Furthermore, since the early 2000s the craft segment has realized consistent growth whereas large breweries have seen a steady decline in sales. Macro-breweries have responded by acquiring smaller breweries to capture a share of the craft market. This study implements an experimental approach to measure consumers’ willingness to pay (WTP) for locally produced and independently owned beer. Regression analysis clearly indicates that consumers prefer locally owned and independently produced beer, and how much they are willing to pay for those attributes. (JEL Classifications: D12, L66)
This study tests the prevalence of choice overload (CO) in the U.S. beer market. We reveal that even if CO exists, sellers have mechanisms to reduce CO's negative consequences. The article describes the implementation of search cost-reducing private nudges (i.e., product quality scores and prominently listed specials) sellers commonly utilize to minimize CO's negative consequences. Our results suggest that, while CO exists for some buyers, it can be eliminated by market interactions on the part of the seller. (JEL Classifications: C93, D03, Q13)
The market structure and recipes for beer has been rapidly changing with craft beers attracting more consumers. Perceived hops quality (hoppiness) is one of the main attributes that microbrewers alter to differentiate their products to satisfy consumers’ changing tastes and preferences. We hypothesize that, in addition to manipulating beer-processing conditions, the conditions under which the hops are grown may also influence the final sensory properties of the beer. Using hops from a field experiment coupled with sensory attributes and sociodemographic characteristics from a contingent valuation survey, we analyzed the impact of under-fertilized hop treatments during the growing season on consumers’ willingness to pay for beer. The results indicate that uninformed consumers in a blind tasting could identify the differences in beer made from hops across the fertilization treatments and, thus, implying that all else equal sufficient fertilizer is required to achieve satisfactory hoppiness for which consumers are willing to pay. (JEL Classifications: C91, D12, L66, Q11)
We evaluate the claim that bottle size formats signal quality changes by performing a controlled laboratory experiment in which we simultaneously auction two different sweet wines: a pomegranate wine and a grape wine. We vary the size of the bottle from 500 mL to 750 mL between participants, but we keep the amount of wine constant across the bottle sizes. We also explore the effect of expectations for the wines, blind tasting, and information about wine attributes on people's willingness to pay (WTP). For both wines, we find evidence consistent with diminishing marginal utility; for the pomegranate wine, we find a premium for the smaller bottle size, which is consistent with changes in the wine's perceived quality. We also find that information is adequate in offsetting the negative effect of the tasting treatment. (JEL Classifications: C23, C24, C91, D12, M31)
This article examines the time-varying risk premium with reference to investments in fine wines. Unlike previous studies, our article focuses on this issue within the context of the financial crisis. To do this, we propose the use of a conditional capital asset pricing model and a multivariate generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity model on several appellation wines worldwide. We find that Bordeaux fine wines were more volatile during the financial crisis and are less volatile in non-crisis periods. In addition, while the volatility of Burgundy wines is second only to Bordeaux wines, non-French fine wines (Australia, Italy, and USA) exhibit inverse volatility trends to French fine wines. (JEL Classifications: C50, G01, G11, Q13)
The prior literature disregards the time-varying conditional correlation and its importance for portfolio diversification when it assesses the risk-return profile of fine wine with that of stocks. To address this limitation, this paper applies a dynamic conditional correlation model and examines the co-movements between fine wine and stock prices in the United Kingdom (UK). Based on monthly data from January 2001 to February 2014, we find that fine wine is a hedge against movements in UK stocks. Nevertheless, it cannot act as an effective safe haven during market turmoil. Those findings have noteworthy implications for financial advisors and portfolio managers who are interested in alternative investments. (JEL Classifications: G1, G11, Q1, Q14)
This study examines the use of wine futures (i.e., advance selling of wine before it is bottled) as a form of operational flexibility to mitigate quality rating risk. At the end of a harvest season, the winemaker obtains a certain number of barrels of wine that can be produced for a particular vintage. While the wine is aging in the barrel, expert reviewers taste the wine, and create a barrel score, indicating the potential quality of the wine and offering clues as to whether, when bottled, it will be superior wine or not. Based on the barrel score, the wine producer determines (1) the percentage of its wine to be sold as futures, and (2) the price of the wine futures. After one more year of aging, the wine is bottled, and the reviewers provide a second review of the wine, and assign a bottle score that influences the market price of the wine.
Our study makes three contributions. First, we develop an analytical model that incorporates uncertain consumer valuations of wine futures and bottled wine, and the uncertain bottle rating that is assigned to the wine at the end of the production process. Our analysis provides insights into how the barrel score, consumer preference (through a conditional-value-at-risk perspective) and the winemaker’s preference influence the winemaker’s allocation and pricing decisions. Our second contribution relates to the impact of consumer heterogeneity on the optimal allocation and pricing decisions. Contrary to common belief that the winemaker may be better off when consumers are more homogenous, our results demonstrate that the winemaker can achieve a higher level of profitability when the market is filled with consumers that are heterogeneous. Third, we test our findings using data collected from Bordeaux wineries engaging in wine futures. Our empirical analysis demonstrates that (1) barrel scores play a significant role in the two decisions regarding the quantity and price of wine futures; and (2) the wine futures market provides a sizable financial benefit to the winemakers. Our analysis yields recommendations for artisanal and boutique wineries that have limited or no experience selling wine futures.
Keywords: wine futures, advance selling, quality uncertainty, pricing
Attitudes towards risk and uncertainty have been indicated to be highly context-dependent, and to be sensitive to the measurement technique employed. We present data collected in controlled experiments with 2,939 subjects in 30 countries measuring risk and uncertainty attitudes through incentivized measures as well as survey questions. Our data show clearly that measures correlate not only within decision contexts or measurement methods, but also across contexts and methods. This points to the existence of one underlying “risk preference”, which influences attitudes independently of the measurement method or choice domain. We furthermore find that answers to a general and a financial survey question correlate with incentivized lottery choices in most countries. Incentivized and survey measures also correlate significantly between countries. This opens the possibility to conduct cultural comparisons on risk attitudes using survey instruments.
Economists and psychologists have developed a variety of experimental methodologies to elicit and assess individual risk attitudes. Choosing which to utilize, however, is largely dependent on the question one wants to answer, as well as the characteristics of the sample population. The goal of this paper is to present a series of prevailing methods for eliciting risk preferences and outline the advantages and disadvantages of each. We do not attempt to give a comprehensive account of all the methods or nuances of measuring risk, but rather to outline some advantages and disadvantages of different methods.
Aside from the equilibrium that Hotelling (1931) displayed, his model of non-renewable resources also contains a continuum of bubble equilibria. In all the equilibria the price of the resource rises at the rate of interest. In a bubble equilibrium, however, the consumption of the resource peters out, and a positive fraction of the original stock continues to trade forever. And that may well be happening in the market for high-end Bordeaux wines.
Bubbles in prices of exhaustible resources. American Association of Wine Economists, Working Paper No. 32
- B Jovanovic