No abstract

As a consequence of the rapid and significative decrease in domestic demand, to avoid structural surplus traditional wine producing countries have been forced to export a growing share of their wine production. This article empirically investigates Argentinean trade policy on the wine sector over the last years, in order to understand its effect on export flows. An expanded gravity model was estimated through a Poisson pseudo-maximum likelihood estimator, in order to account for heteroskedasticity. The data used refer to Argentinean exports of bottled wine to all main world importers during the period 1997-2010, and account for more than 90% of total trade flows. Our results show that Mercosur membership has promoted Argentinean wine exports to other Latin American countries, but may as a whole have been counter-productive. A more open trade policy could increase Argentinean bottled wine exports by more than 5.8%. In addition, given the rise in wine imports and consumption in countries with high tariff barriers, such as China, the small number of free trade agreements could penalize Argentinean exports even more in the future.

Mendoza is the main wine-producing province of Argentina, and the government is currently implementing a range of policies that seek to improve grape grower profitability, including a vineyard replanting program. This study uses a dataset of all grape sales recorded in Mendoza from 2007 to 2018, totaling 90,910 observations, to investigate the determinants of grape prices. Key findings include: smaller volume transactions receive lower-average prices per kilogram sold; the discount for cash payments is higher in less-profitable regions; and the effect of wine stock levels on prices is substantial for all varieties. Long-run predicted prices are also estimated for each variety, and region; and these results suggest that policymakers should review some of the varieties currently used in the vineyard replanting program. (JEL Classifications: Q12, Q13, Q18)

The European grapevine moth is one of the most pertinent viticulture pests. In recent years, the moth extended to New World countries, some of which started eradication programs. We used a dataset for Mendoza and a county-fixed effects regression model to estimate the impact of the moth on grape production across the province's counties. Our results suggest that the moth led to a decrease of up to 8% of Mendoza's grape production; however, this may have been worse without strong eradication efforts. We conclude that moth eradication programs may be economically justified in Argentina, and perhaps in other countries. (JEL Classifications: Q10, Q18, C23)

In recent years in San Juan, Argentina the lack of manpower to harvest, clean and packing export table grape caused serious economic problems and it is the most important reason that explains the disappearance of Argentina in this area. Labor is very expensive and it is the highest production cost. Also it is unknown in Argentina whether it is convenient hiring labor or not. In the other hand the efficient used of labor is disregarded and buying hard technology in replacement of labor is very difficult in table grape production. The objective of this study is to measure the mean and marginal labor productivity during harvesting, packing and to describe the process. A sectional study was carry out with 144 interviews in seven districts in San Juan. The harvesting and cleaning time was measured and the number of table grape boxes done in a certain period of time too. We observed each harvesting and packing group made up of one to four people and that when the number of workers per group increased, the number of boxes per worker per hour had reduced from 4 to 1 resulting in a negative marginal productivity. Up to 20% of the effective working time a day was lost due to failures in the work organization