Title: A comparative economic analysis of the wine industry: evidence from the USA

Authors: Gökçe Soydemir; James Strong; Jeremy Lovejoy

Addresses: Department of Accounting and Finance, College of Business Administration, California State University, Stanislaus, 1 University Circle, Turlock, CA 95382, USA ' Department of Accounting and Finance, College of Business Administration, California State University, Stanislaus, 1 University Circle, Turlock, CA 95382, USA ' Department of Accounting and Finance, College of Business Administration, California State University, Stanislaus, 1 University Circle, Turlock, CA 95382, USA

Abstract: A comparative economic analysis of the wine industry reveals unique findings relative to other industries in the USA. A distinction is made between wine consumed at home and wine consumed away from home, an area that is little examined by extant literature. The results show that the state of the economy at different time intervals such as during expansions or recessions has different impacts on the wine industry relative to other industries. Vector autoregressive models that are multivariate in nature and unique data from Datastream reveal that wine as a sin good behaves in the opposite direction to business cycles. Thus, the study reveals unseen patterns such as the bifurcation between wine at home, wine away from home, luxury vs. cheap wine in response to fluctuations in economic activity. The study uses industrial production as a proxy of employment on wine industry illustrating the unique nature of this indicator distinct from most other indicators with respect to elastic and inelastic goods, normal and inferior goods, necessity and luxury goods.

Keywords: VAR model; wine industry; business cycles; USA.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBSR.2026.152909

International Journal of Business and Systems Research, 2026 Vol.20 No.2, pp.139 - 150

Received: 05 Dec 2024
Accepted: 29 Dec 2024
Published online: 14 Apr 2026 *

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