The Economics of Nested Names: Name Specificity, Reputations, and Price Premia

A good can be identified by its region or country of origin, the firm that produces it, and its product name. In other words, names can nest within each other to categorize goods with increasing specificity. This article develops a conceptual framework for jointly analyzing the effect of product, firm, and collective reputations on market price. The model is estimated via quantile regression with California wine market data. The results portray how the structure and relative importance of reputations change as product prices vary. Specifically, reputation premia migrate from collective to specific names as prices increase.