Do More Expensive Violins[Wine] Sound[Tastes] Better?

In the world of musical instruments and wine, quality is more subjective, and price signals more than just quality. It’s for sure not quasi-linear utility. Sometimes, the more expensive, the merrier.

Soloist evaluations of six Old Italian and six new violins

Link: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1323367111

10 renowned soloists each blind-tested six Old Italian violins (including five by Stradivari) and six new during two 75-min sessions—the first in a rehearsal room, the second in a 300-seat concert hall. When asked to choose a violin to replace their own for a hypothetical concert tour, 6 of the 10 soloists chose a new instrument. A single new violin was easily the most-preferred of the 12. On average, soloists rated their favorite new violins more highly than their favorite old for playability, articulation, and projection, and at least equal to old in terms of timbre. Soloists failed to distinguish new from old at better than chance levels.

Do More Expensive Wines Taste Better? Evidence from a Large Sample of Blind Tastings

Individuals who are unaware of the price do not derive more enjoyment from more expensive wine. In a sample of more than 6,000 blind tastings, we find that the correlation between price and overall rating is small and negative, suggesting that individuals on average enjoy more expensive wines slightly less. For individuals with wine training, however, we find indications of a non-negative relationship between price and enjoyment. Our results are robust to the inclusion of individual fixed effects, and are not driven by outliers: when omitting the top and bottom deciles of the price distribution, our qualitative results are strengthened, and the statistical significance is improved further. These findings suggest that non-expert wine consumers should not anticipate greater enjoyment of the intrinsic qualities of a wine simply because it is expensive or is appreciated by experts. (JEL Classification: L15, L66, M30, Q13)

Reference

[1] C. Fritz, J. Curtin, J. Poitevineau, H. Borsarello, I. Wollman, F. Tao, & T. Ghasarossian, Soloist evaluations of six Old Italian and six new violins, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 111 (20) 7224-7229, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1323367111 (2014).

[2] Goldstein R, Almenberg J, Dreber A, Emerson JW, Herschkowitsch A, Katz J. Do More Expensive Wines Taste Better? Evidence from a Large Sample of Blind Tastings. Journal of Wine Economics. 2008;3(1):1-9. doi:10.1017/S1931436100000523