Graduation Year

2017

Document Type

Open Access Senior Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

Economics

Second Department

French Studies

Reader 1

Dalton Krauss

Reader 2

Roberto Pedace

Terms of Use & License Information

Terms of Use for work posted in Scholarship@Claremont.

Rights Information

© 2016 Gweneth Marter

Abstract

Robert Parker is an esteemed, somewhat controversial wine-critic. Since 1978, Parker has assigned every wine he tastes a score between 50 and 100. He uses this method to communicate to both consumers and producers his opinion of the quality, taste, and aging potential of the wine. Between the years 2005 and 2015, Robert Parker graded 115 wines from the French region of Provence. The goal of this thesis is to determine whether and to what extent Robert Parker’s grades affect the price of wine. Through descriptive statistics and regression analysis of Robert Parker’s grade and year of production on the average price, I assess the effects of one expert’s opinion on the price of Provençal wine. My results show that, while there is a statistically significant relationship between Robert Parker’s grade and the price of wine, the relationship between the two variables has not varied considerably over the past ten years. In addition, my results show an indifference on the part of Provençal wine-producers in regards to pricing based on the grades their wines receive from the wine-critic. This led me to the conclusion that the relationship between price of wine and grade is not as strong as hypothesized. This is an interesting finding given the prevalence of consumer reports and expert-opinion based journals for consumable goods.

Download

Share

COinS