Business sustainability has been defined as meeting current needs while providing the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. However, few firms invest in practices geared at sustainability. In this article, we investigate how family ties to future generations via the intention of transgenerational succession can be associated with the adoption of sustainable practices. Using data from 281 wineries in the United States collected through a survey questionnaire, we show that ties to future generations, measured as the intention of the winery owner to pass down the winery to their children, are associated with the adoption of sustainable certification.

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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.Winemaking cannot be envisaged unless very specific weather conditions prevail. But this is obviously not sufficient, since winemaking also involves a complex technology that needs natural endowments which can hardly be modified (land, slopesÕ exposure, other endowments, summarised by what is often called ÔterroirÕ), inputs that take 20 to 30 years before producing good quality outputs (vines), manual operations (picking), mechanical operations (crushing, racking), chemical processes (during fermentation) and specific storage conditions once the wine is bottled. There is little that can be done to correct an error in one of the various and delicate steps which extend over several years for every vintage, though nowadays it is said that a good chemist can make miracles. Wine is also the subject of many legends and production secrets. Wine tasting adds to this aura of mystery with its esoteric vocabulary describing perfumes and the harmony of a wine.The influence of weather has been the subject of several studies, which consistently show that rain is needed during the winter season, while dry weather is good during the growing season and when grapes are picked. Warm weather has also a positive effect during the whole growing season.

This article investigates the effects of the COVID-19 outbreak on electoral participation. We study the French municipal elections that took place at the very beginning of the ongoing pandemic and held in over 9,000 municipalities on March 15, 2020. In addition to the simple note that turnout rates decreased to a historically low level, we establish a robust relationship between the depressed turnout rate and the disease. Using various estimation strategies and employing a large number of potential confounding factors, we find that the participation rate decreases with city proximity to COVID-19 clusters. Furthermore, the proximity has conditioned impacts according to the proportion of elderly –who are the most threatened– within the city. Cities with higher population density, where the risk of infection is higher, and cities where only one list ran at the election, which dramatically reduces competitiveness, experienced differentiated effects of distance.

Ecolabels are part of a new wave of environmental policy that emphasizes information disclosure as a tool to induce environmentally friendly behavior by both firms and consumers. Little consensus exists as to whether ecocertified products are actually better than their conventional counterparts. This study seeks to understand the link between ecocertification and product quality. We use data from three leading wine-rating publications (the Wine Advocate, Wine Enthusiast, and Wine Spectator) to assess quality for 74,148 wines produced in California between 1998 and 2009. Our results indicate that ecocertification is associated with a statistically significant increase in wine quality rating. Being ecocertified increases the scaled score of the wine by 4.1 points on average. (JEL Classifications: L15, L66, Q13, Q21, Q56)

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.Winemaking cannot be envisaged unless very specific weather conditions prevail. But this is obviously not sufficient, since winemaking also involves a complex technology that needs natural endowments which can hardly be modified (land, slopesÕ exposure, other endowments, summarised by what is often called ÔterroirÕ), inputs that take 20 to 30 years before producing good quality outputs (vines), manual operations (picking), mechanical operations (crushing, racking), chemical processes (during fermentation) and specific storage conditions once the wine is bottled. There is little that can be done to correct an error in one of the various and delicate steps which extend over several years for every vintage, though nowadays it is said that a good chemist can make miracles. Wine is also the subject of many legends and production secrets. Wine tasting adds to this aura of mystery with its esoteric vocabulary describing perfumes and the harmony of a wine.The influence of weather has been the subject of several studies, which consistently show that rain is needed during the winter season, while dry weather is good during the growing season and when grapes are picked. Warm weather has also a positive effect during the whole growing season.

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.Winemaking cannot be envisaged unless very specific weather conditions prevail. But this is obviously not sufficient, since winemaking also involves a complex technology that needs natural endowments which can hardly be modified (land, slopesÕ exposure, other endowments, summarised by what is often called ÔterroirÕ), inputs that take 20 to 30 years before producing good quality outputs (vines), manual operations (picking), mechanical operations (crushing, racking), chemical processes (during fermentation) and specific storage conditions once the wine is bottled. There is little that can be done to correct an error in one of the various and delicate steps which extend over several years for every vintage, though nowadays it is said that a good chemist can make miracles. Wine is also the subject of many legends and production secrets. Wine tasting adds to this aura of mystery with its esoteric vocabulary describing perfumes and the harmony of a wine.The influence of weather has been the subject of several studies, which consistently show that rain is needed during the winter season, while dry weather is good during the growing season and when grapes are picked. Warm weather has also a positive effect during the whole growing season.

This article considers celebrities as brands and relies on the brand personality literature to investigate how celebrities' personality impacts their appeal. Celebrities' appeal is analysed across different cultural fields (TV, music, sport and cinema) and over time. Using data gathered by Epoll Market Research about the perception of more than 3000 celebrities among the US population, our results show that apart from rudeness, all dimensions of personality have a positive impact on appeal. Interestingly, our results show that the impact of personality dimensions varies across cultural fields. Finally, we provide a dynamic analysis of the evolution of appeal over time, which also exhibits different patterns (declining, inverted U-shape) across cultural fields.