Global consumption patterns for alcoholic beverages are evolving, with some convergence in per capita consumption among nations as traditionally beer-drinking nations increase their consumption of wine and, conversely, wine-consuming nations shift towards beer. This article explores regional patterns of alcoholic beverage consumption within the United States. One purpose is to see if similar patterns of spatial convergence in consumption patterns can be observed within countries as have been documented in international comparisons. A more fundamental purpose is to explore the converse question and seek to better understand the persistent differences in alcoholic beverage consumption among groups. These issues are addressed using annual U.S. national and state-level data over four decades and, for the more recent period, supermarket scanner data at finer scales of geopolitical aggregation. Socioeconomic and other demographic variables appear to play significant roles in accounting for the spatial differences in consumption patterns, although the details vary across different models and data sets. The analysis of demand using less-aggregative data for a shorter time period reveals some shortcomings in the corresponding analysis based on state-level data over a longer time period, but with poorly measured prices. These findings might extrapolate to studies making international comparisons using national aggregate data. (JEL Classifications: D12, L66)

Rates of alcohol taxation, and the types of tax instruments used, vary enormously between countries and have tended to rise in recent times. Within each country, they also vary between beverages and often between qualities and styles of each beverage. This article computes consumer tax equivalents in U.S. dollars per litre of alcohol and as percentages of wholesale prices of representative beverages for 42 high- and middle-income countries. That allows comparisons across countries of taxes not just for each product on its own, but also relative to those for other alcoholic beverages. The wide dispersion of rates and differences in tax instruments across countries and products suggest differing strengths of health and welfare lobbyists and industry groups in influencing government decision-making. (JEL Classifications: D12, D62, E62, H23, I18, P46)

I use a computational linguistic algorithm to measure the topics covered in textual descriptions of wine. I ask whether there is information in the text that consumers value. Wine is a prominent example of an experience good. There is substantial product differentiation in the market, and consumers only have limited information on the utility they will receive when consumed. Thus, information is expected to be valuable. Evaluating descriptions of wine produced across the United States, I use a hedonic price regression to explore whether the descriptions provide any new information not already available to the consumer. Initial results suggest that text descriptions are shown to lose their explanatory value when varietal and numerical ratings are included as controls. I then show that once the varietal, region, and numerical ratings are adequately controlled for, there is information in the descriptions that consumers value. (JEL Classifications: C81, D83, L15)

This article presents a new experimental protocol for estimating consumers’ willingness-to-pay (WTP) for products involved in a reshuffle of geographical indications (GIs), e.g., a change of hierarchical levels within a restricted area. Although the collective reputation of a given GI depends on its temporal stability, reshuffling a GI area could make it better aligned with product quality or consumers’ perception. We first provide a simple theoretical model in which consumers put a negative value on within-GI quality variance, thereby showing that reshuffling the GI designation scheme may increase WTP without any change in product quality. Using the experimental protocol, we evaluate consumer perceptions of different reshuffling scenarios for the vineyards of Marsannay, Burgundy, France. The results reveal a significant increase in WTP for the current distribution of products’ quality. Elicited WTP values are then used to simulate the optimal GI reshuffle. (JEL Classifications: L66, Q18, Q28)