Willingness to Pay for Wine Bullshit: Some New Estimates

As part of a classic article in this journal, Richard Quandt identified 123 wine descriptors that he deemed to be bullshit. In this paper, I examine whether wine consumers are willing to pay any more (or less) for wine if it is described by one of those “bullshit” descriptors. I use three methods to examine that. The first method involves applying a hedonic regression to a dataset of prices and expert descriptions for about 50,000 wines. The second method involves applying a matching estimator to the same dataset. The third method involves a stated-preference survey of about 500 wine consumers. The three methods suggest that for most of the descriptors Quandt deemed to be bullshit, most consumers’ marginal willingness to pay for a descriptor is zero or near-zero. Yet, for some of the descriptors, some consumers do seem to have a non-zero marginal willingness to pay, perhaps because the descriptors shape a consumer's subjective experience or because they signal objective aspects of wine. (JEL Classifications: D12, D83, L66)

A Historical Review of Classic Publications in Web of Science Category of Obstetrics and Gynecology

Classic publications in Web of Science Category of Obstetrics and Gynecology were identified by using bibliometric indicator, TCyear, total citations since publication to the end of the recent year from Web of Science Core Collection. Fourteen classic publications with TC2016 ≥ 1,000 times were analysied. We also applied a citation indicator, the Cyear, total citations in the most recent year only, to assess the recent impact of the classic publications. The results showed that the 14 classic publications were published between 1927 and 2004, and that the most productive journal were American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology. Citation histories were applied for impact of the classic publications after their publications. In addition, highlight of each classic articles were presented. A classic article by Sampson in 1927 was found to be the classic Sleeping Beauties in Web of Science category of obstetrics and gynecology.

Four Senses of “Meaning” in the History of Ideas

At least four senses of “meaning” need to be kept distinct when describing the proper way to discuss the history of ideas. The first sense, communicative meaning, relies on the communicative intentions of the author and is very close to H. P. Grice’s “nonnatural meaning.” The second sense, meaning as significance or importance, is close to Grice’s “natural meaning,” and the author focuses on a type that depends on human interests; in this sense, meaning is always relative to a person or group and changes as the events or the interests of the person or group change. The author shows that Quentin Skinner in his classic article, “Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas,” confuses these senses. While historians of ideas often focus on identifying communicative meaning, what historians care most about is the significance or importance that something had or has for people in the past or present.

CommentsThe River’s Source: Empirical Research and Lisa Blomgren Amsler’s Employment Arbitration: The Repeat Player Effect

Lisa Blomgren Amsler’s classic article was a groundbreaking piece of work in the genuine sense that it broke new ground on an important issue and laid the path for subsequent work in the area. As I will describe in this commentary, my own research, along with that of others in this field, was deeply influenced by the crucial initial steps that Amsler took....

Bargaining in the Shadow of the Law: A Classic Article with a Contemporary Challenge

Bargaining in the Shadow of the Law: The Case of Divorce remains a classic of the dispute resolution literature because it stands for and crystallizes an idea that for us in in the dispute resolution field today now seems like a fundamentally obvious truth: that the outcome of private bargaining is impacted by the endowments granted to parties by legal rules. In this way, the article—aided by its excellent title—serves as a shorthand for those looking to communicate this idea....

Unpacking the Invisible Military Backpack

Educators in the United States have failed in teaching about war. Educators have failed to teach broadly enough, consistently enough, and with the sense of urgency demanded by the immense destruction of the United States’ Post-9/11 Wars. In the spirit of exchanging ideas, strategies, and inspiration, this article offers 56 suggestions for teaching about war. While the suggestions are focused on people teaching about U.S. wars, they can be applied by anyone teaching about war anywhere, at any level, in any field, for any length of time. The article discusses how much of the violence of war is similar to the “invisible knapsack” Peggy McIntosh identifies in her classic article “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack.” War is not the same as whiteness, but war, militarization, and militarism shape our daily lives in profound but often invisible ways. In this context, educators can help make war visible and contribute to movements to end current wars and stop future ones.

Estimating Individuals’ Political Perceptions While Adjusting for Differential Item Functioning

Questions about people’s perceptions of politicians or other political actors are of central interest in a wide variety of research areas. But measuring these perceptions is difficult in part because respondents may use survey response scales in different ways. In a classic article, Aldrich and McKelvey (1977) introduce a method adjusting for such differential item functioning by assuming that all respondents perceive political stimuli identically. I propose a modeling approach built on the Aldrich and McKelvey framework but incorporating anchoring vignettes. This approach allows for scale use adjustments without assuming that all respondents perceive a given politician identically. I apply this model to data on Americans’ perceptions of parties, elected officials, and other political actors, showing that, contrary to previous arguments, most variation in ideology ratings is due not to differing scale use, but to differences in underlying perceptions. Specifically, while perceptions of Republican politicians and the Republican party show no significant differences by respondent partisanship, Democratic and Republican respondents differ strongly in their perceptions of the ideology of Democratic political actors as well as the Supreme Court.

Contractual reliance damages

The term ‘reliance interest’ was coined by Fuller and Perdue, whose classic article ‘The Reliance Interest in Contract Damages’ first clarified and explored the different possible objectives of damages for breach of contract. The aim of damages protecting the reliance interest is, according to Fuller and Perdue, ‘… to put the plaintiff in as good a position as he was in before the promise was made’. This can alternatively and preferably be expressed as aiming to put the claimant into as good a position as she would have been in if no contract had been made.