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French Wine Exports to China: Evidence from Intra-French Regional Diversification and Competition

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 February 2020

Olivier Bargain
Olivier Bargain*
Affiliation:
University of Bordeaux, LAREFI, Av. Leon Duguit, 33600Pessac, France; e-mail: olivier.bargain@u-bordeaux.fr.
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Abstract

While France leads the way in the Chinese import market of wine, China is France's third largest wine export market by value. In this article, I analyze the determinants of France's wine exports to China, differentiated by French wine growing regions. I estimate a simple demand using a dataset on wine shipments of 100 different types of French bottled wines to China between 1998 and 2015. I find a wide range of income and price effects across French regions—a range not unlike those found by studies spanning multiple countries. Bordeaux wines exhibit the largest Chinese income elasticity. However, other French regions appear to catch up. Price elasticity, meanwhile, is particularly low for highly reputable wines, but quite high for wines targeting middle-class customers and wines from regions traditionally known for white wines. (JEL Classifications: F10, F14, L66, Q17)

Keywords

ChinademandFrench winegravity modelimports
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Wine Economics , Volume 15 , Special Issue 2: Wine, Macroeconomics, and Finance , May 2020 , pp. 134 - 162
Copyright
Copyright © American Association of Wine Economists 2020

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Footnotes

The author is grateful to Mihai Mutascu and Camélia Turcu for insightful comments and suggestions, as well as the editor of the special issue, Jean-Marie Cardebat, the anonymous reviewer, and of the editor in chief, Karl Storchmann, for useful comments and suggestions.

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