The French drink wine and Germans drink beer. Many have heard this old saying, but is there still truth to it? Joshua Aizenman and Eileen L. Brook examine how wine and beer drinking patterns are changing as globalization increases product varieties within countries. Using wine and beer consumption data for 38 countries, the authors find the differences in countries drinking habits are narrowing. The authors examine production, political and cultural aspects that affect this convergence to consistency across boarders wine and beer drank in each country and on an aggregate level.
The Commission for Distilled Spirits in the Netherlands has data on wine and beer consumed in liter per capita from 38 countries. The data ranges from 1963 to 2000. Aizenman and Brook analyze the changing drinking patterns of wine as a percentage of the total amount of wine and beer drank in each country and on an aggregate level.
In 1963, 34.3% of the world drank wine. That percentage decreased to 24.6% in 2000. A graph of the wine shares for all countries exhibits preliminary evidence of a convergence. Even countries with high wine percentages in 1963 fell by 2000, such as those from French Legal origin fell 52.4% to 31.1%. Countries with low wine share in 1963 increased by 2000, such as countries of German Legal Origin going from 17% to 21.3%.
To explain the variation in wine shares for different countries, Aizenman and Brook examine country production, political and cultural history. In 1963, grape production was a good indicator of consumption as distribution depended on the ability to produce grapes with the correlation of .9 in 1963. However, as globalization made trade easier, local grape production no longer limited the available supply of wine, and the correlation declined to only .64 in 2000. In a similar vein, the latitude of the capital, or the location on the globe, played an important role in wine consumption. Fourteen countries with wine share over 50% in 1963 had capitals between .31 and .51. Again, globalization decreased this relationship.
Evidence suggests politics also had a significant influence on convergence. Those countries with institutions that encouraged integration had more rapid convergence, with the variation in wine share decreasing the fastest and most steadily. These countries include: United Kingdom, United States, Ireland, South Africa, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Euro countries.
Culture played a role in convergence as well. Although rates in neighboring countries were high, percentages for France, 77.7% to 60.7%, and Germany 11.9% to 15.6%, did not move as fast. The authors speculate that cultural patterns slow down convergence. Relatively, France and Germany, countries with well-known drinking stereotypes, did converge some, but other countries such as several from Latin American, did not follow the trend.
Taking a look into the history books, the authors determine that population of European decent has an effect on wine consumption and in certain countries, Brazil, Mexico and Peru, had few European descendents and low wine share.
All this evidence point Aizenman and Brook towards a model of habit formation, where past trends are reflected in current trends. For example, parents influence their children’s drinking habits, the stronger the habit formation, the slower the convergence because people are resistant to change. The habits can be instilled in the social life and ideals of standards of living people are willing to sacrifice to keep.
Although I believe the theory that globalization has pushed drinking patterns towards an average, the authors never explicitly discuss what they set out to find in the introduction. Aizenman and Brook have big plans to discuss the benefits of globalization in low concentration industries such as wine and beer industries, but never do. I was disappointed because I thought that would be an argument contrary to the theory that globalization kills the little man, variety and individualism.
After reading this paper, I wonder if the authors did any research, or just sat around thinking off the top of their heads. There are no explanations for many of the ideas they say are important. For example, the point of latitude. I assume latitude is important for climate of growing grapes, but they never say why latitude is important as an indicator in 1963. Many of their history reasons don’t have any data or equations behind the reasoning. The mysterious charts in the appendix that the authors never refer to could have something to do with that, but I do not know.
With no explanations, the authors fail to tie the paper together. I had to reread the abstract and conclusion, which interestingly are almost identical, to understand the main points of the paper and what each piece of evidence was showing.
In addition, the authors look at wine as a percentage of the sum of beer and wine. I found this odd because those aren’t the only alcoholic beverages people drink. To completely leave out spirits would seem to skew the data. Instead of switching from beer to wine, people could be drinking more whiskey. Perhaps tastes aren’t converging because people are drinking more spirits and less wine and beer.