The Informational Content of Geographical Indications
研究了法国勃艮第葡萄酒地理标志的信息含量，发现其能准确反映葡萄园特征，但存在游说导致的偏差，并提供了优化未来地理标志设计的建议。
Geographical indications (GIs) convey information about the place of production as a proxy for the attributes of agricultural products. We define the informational content of the GI proxy as its capacity to describe the tangible characteristics of production sites, instead of random noise or intangible factors from political bargaining about designation (i.e., lobbying effects). We estimate econometrically the informational content of wine‐related GIs for the Côte d'Or region of Burgundy, France. We show that GIs signal vineyard attributes with high precision, while we find some persistent bias from lobbying effects. We also study alternative classifications, from history and from simulations, which reveal a significant increase in the informational content of GIs over the last hundred years or so, and provide guidelines for better designated GIs in the future.