Potential market failures in the Portuguese wine industry

Abstract

The wine industry is characterized by a monopolistic competition market structure, with high product differentiation. In this study, based on the predictions of microeconomic theory as applied to market equilibrium and market failure, the statistical data on production, trade and domestic consumption, as well as the governance model adopted, were analyzed. The main goal was to examine potential market failures in the Portuguese wine industry, concentrating mainly on those related to information asymmetry and transaction costs. The analysis shows that while Portugal constitutes a significant source of low-priced wines, both for its home consumers as well as for those abroad, most wines lack reputation and therefore have little potential to transfer value to upstream economic agents, and almost no possibility of increasing consumers’ willingness to pay. Though there is detailed information on production, exports and trade, limited information exists on domestic consumption. Given the small dimension of some wine regions, the governance model adopted does not benefit from scale economies and requires higher transaction costs.