The Italian wine supply chain has performed well in recent decades both in terms of profitability and success on the domestic and international markets. This is despite the fact that it is fragmented in terms of products, prices and consumption context, and, in particular, despite the fact that it is characterised by an organisation that hinders the full exploitation of economies of scale. This paradox has not been investigated in literature. We propose several elements in support of the hypothesis that the Italian wine sector’s success is linked to favourable elements of the Porter Diamond Model (5 out of 6) but also to the “district” nature of a large part of the sector. The presence of numerous networks, some of which are formal and others informal, gives most Italian local production systems specialising in grapes and wine the characteristics of industrial districts, due to the local social capital that is stratified there. These networks include operators such as Cooperatives and Consorzi di Tutela, upstream and downstream industries and services, tourism, research and educational bodies. Such networks can overcome the weakness represented by the low concentration and small average size of the operators. To support this hypothesis, we analyse the historical evolution of the sector and its drivers, the structural features of the different phases of the wine chain (grape growing, winemaking, bottling and distribution), the market relationships within the chain and the national and European policies favouring the sector. This analysis also underlines the differences between the Italian sector and its competitors from the Old and New World.

Consumption and production of proteins derived from animals have more significant environmental and health impacts than proteins derived from plants. This raises concerns mainly in consideration of the predictable increased consumption of animal proteins at the expense of vegetal ones due to growing income, especially in developing countries. Animal protein consumption, and particularly meat consumption, seems to start to decrease at a high level of income, which may suggest that economic growth solves or attenuates the environmental and health problems of animal food consumption. To test this possibility, the relationship between per capita income and animal and vegetal protein consumption is explored. Using a cross-country regression for 142 countries in 2017, animal-based protein, meat protein, and vegetal-based protein consumption are specified as dependent variables. In addition to per capita income, other potential drivers of protein choices, including ecological, demographic and social factors are controlled for. Apart from income, which still seems to be the most important driver of any type of protein consumption, the results suggest that protein consumption from animal sources and meat sources have different determinants. Though there is actually some evidence of an inverted U-shaped relationship between per capita income and animal protein consumption, the peak is at such high levels as to make economic growth irrelevant to curb animal protein consumption.

Organic wines are increasingly produced and appreciated. Because organic production is more costly, a crucial question is whether they benefit from a price premium. We estimate hedonic price functions for Piedmont organic and conventional wines. We use data on the production side in addition to variables of interest to consumers. Our results show that, along with characteristics of interest to consumers, some farm and producer characteristics not directly relevant for consumers do significantly affect wine prices. We find that organic wine tends to obtain higher prices than conventional wine. The price premium is not simply an addition to other price components; organic quality modifies the impact of the other variables on price. (JEL Classification: C21, D49, L11, Q12)

In this paper we estimate how a variety of subjective measures of quality taken from the published opinions of several experts on Italian wines (Barolo and Barbaresco) are determined by the weather conditions during the relevant season, in order to assess their reliability. Since these measures of quality are only ordinal, we estimate their determinants using an ordered probit model. The method provides measures of the determinants of vintage quality ratings and suggestions on the reliability of each expert. (JEL Classifications: D12, Q11, Q13)

The evolution of farm size and land use are important determinants of the efficiency and profitability of agriculture and the configuration of the territory. In this paper, a conceptual framework of the evolution of the number of farms and land use is presented, arguing that a major determinant of the change in the number of farms is the presence or absence of successors to ageing farmers and that these socio-demographic variables shape the evolution of the sector in terms of farm size, while they do not significantly affect the changes in the farmed area. This hypothesis was empirically tested with data drawn from individual farm records of the Italian Agricultural Censuses of 2000 and 2010—aggregated at the municipality level for an Italian region—by estimating regressions on the decrease rates of the number of farms, the utilised agricultural area and the total agricultural area. The results support the conclusion that the change in the number of farms was largely determined by the absence of successors in family farms and by the average operators’ age, unlike the change in the farmed area, for which natural land conditions were the main drivers.