Dimensions of marketplace exclusion: representations,resistances and responses

ABSTRACT

This positioning paper explains and develops the concept of marketplace exclusion, which has received little attention to date in the field of marketing and consumer research. Essentially the concept refers to the mechanisms through which certain individuals and communities are barred from the resources and opportunities provided by the market. Participation in the market and the accompanying rights and responsibilities that allow individuals to act as legitimate consumers is essential for social cohesion and social relations. However, one consequence of consumer culture has been a shift away from values of community and citizenship towards those of materialism and competition. Marketplace exclusion encompasses big questions of poverty, sexism and racism to individual consequences such as isolation and alienation. The paper examines various causes and types of exclusion and discusses key research questions and methodological issues in studying this topic. Finally, it introduces the papers included in this special issue of CMC.     

Consuming stress: exploring hidden dimensions of consumption-related strain at the intersection of gender and poverty

Abstract

Consumer stress as experienced at the nexus of gender and poverty, has received limited attention in marketing and consumer research. This empirical study applies the theoretical lens of social stress to explore gendered aspects of poverty, consumption and marketplace activity. It demonstrates that for women in poverty, consumer stress is a relational issue, involving marketplace and interpersonal (dis)connections. In particular, it surfaces the hidden, often, nuanced power relations that place additional strain on women with limited finances, as they oscillate between marketplace and intra-household pressures. By applying social stress theory, the study offers a new way of thinking about the unequal social relations and associated consumption strains bound up with the disadvantaged position of an intersectional group of women experiencing poverty.     

Product design and tort law: Safety implications of increasing similarity in civil liability and regulatory standards

This article addresses the impact of changes in design defect tort law on safety in the European Union and the United States, and draws two conclusions bearing significant product safety implications. First, tort law’s approach to design defectiveness is developing more cohesion. Although important differences in jurisdictional approaches remain, the differences appear to be diminishing rather than growing. In both the United States and the European Union, courts are increasingly relying upon a risk/utility balancing test to determine whether to impose civil liability for allegedly defective product designs. Second, the direction in which tort law is evolving is bringing it closer to defectiveness tests typically employed by government regulatory agencies in Europe and the United States. Civil liability standards are increasingly similar to regulatory standards used in determining whether a product should be allowed on the market at all. This trend toward greater cohesion in tort standards, and tort law’s increasing similarity to regulatory standards, has both positive and negative implications for safety. On the whole, the trend is likely desirable – it should encourage efficient products that are closer to an optional blend of safety and utility.     

对国际卡特尔的有效惩罚额度研究

对国际卡特尔行为实施有效威慑的一个关键问题是如何确立惩罚额度。本文认为，无论是以美国为代表的3倍损失赔偿，还是以欧盟为代表的单倍损失赔偿，都不是合理的惩罚标准。对国际卡特尔的合理的惩罚额度应使卡特尔成员承担其非法行为所带来的全部社会成本，包括国际卡特尔的超高定价、社会净损失、调查诉讼成本以及监禁成本。     

福利与贫困——贫困的内涵及其概念基础的演变

困与贫困治理一直是世界各国面临的重大问题。经济学家将贫困问题研究归于福利问题研究,即研究社会的福利水平与分配。当前对贫困的研究正步入一个新的阶段,贫困的内涵也有了很大的改变。这一发展改变的仅是传统评价个人福利和贫困状况的思路,很多问题还处于不断争论的状态。     

Buyer Power and its Impact on Competition in the Food Retail Distribution Sector of the European Union

In recent years, there has been significant consolidation and concentration in food retail distribution in the European Union, as our paper documents. We examine the implications of this from the social welfare viewpoint. Our focus is on buyer power, since a commonly held view is that, arising from increased concentration, it may be a buffer to significant manufacturer power. We investigate the issue both theoretically and through data and case study work. We suggest the market will develop into a concentrated pattern across Europe, but that the eventual impact on consumers will depend significantly on the nature and form of competition between large retail chains and how well buying groups ensure that even the smaller retailers can compete on an effective basis.     

Impact of EU agricultural policy on developing countries: A Uganda case study

Despite substantial reforms, the European Union (EU)'s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is still criticised for its detrimental effects on developing countries. This paper provides updated evidence on the impact of the CAP on one developing country, Uganda. It goes beyond estimating macrolevel economic effects by analysing the impacts on poverty. The policy simulation results show that eliminating EU agricultural support would have marginal but nonetheless positive impacts on the Ugandan economy and its poverty indicators. From the perspective of the EU's commitment to policy coherence for development, this supports the view that further reducing EU agricultural support would be positive for development.     

Armut: vom Elend eines Begriffs

Poverty is a frequent topic in the media and in politics, but the definition of poverty is not satisfactory. The European Commission’s poverty of risk concept ignores social and regional income discrepancies, assets are disregarded, and real poverty is not defined. Other definitions show that poverty is difficult to grasp in practice. There are also differing opinions on and definitions of poverty in the population. A lot of those people who were defined as at risk of poverty according to the EU concept are not poor in reality and not unsatisfied with their income. This lack of clarity has led to the proposal to replace the term “poverty” with “low income”. Future research should place greater weight on determining the causes of low incomes.     

Labour mobility in the EU: Dynamics,patterns and policies

The continued economic crisis has become a major test for the labour markets of individual member states. Labour mobility within the European Union has the potential to help to reduce labour market pressures and ease economic imbalances. However, a long-term loss of working age population can be detrimental to sending countries. This Forum explores mobility patterns within the European Union and analyses the labour market and welfare effects of labour mobility via case studies of the UK, Poland, Germany and Spain. It also examines a number of its aspects that have important political and institutional relevance for the European Union and its future.     

The role of member states as rule-makers in the European Union

Although the Treaty of Amsterdam has not lived up to the expectations of those who wanted a substantially stronger and more active European Union, it has expanded considerably the competences of the Union. In some policy areas such as social policy, it has added significantly to the obligations of the member states. By implication, the policy discretion of member states has been reduced further. The reasonable question that arises is whether the Union will and whether it should keep encroaching on the policy discretion (some use the word sovereignty) of its member states? The aim of this paper is to provide an answer to that question with respect to the economic functions of member states.     

Bilateral Trade and the Eurozone: Evidence from New Member Countries

The question of whether and how much currency unions increase bilateral trade among their members has garnered much attention since Rose’s seminal article. The answer is as pertinent now as ever for both the Eurozone’s existing and future members as the financial crisis shook the very foundations of the European Monetary Union (EMU) and brought its shortcomings into the spotlight. This paper analyses the issue using the gravity equation with country pair and time fixed effects. For a sample of the four new members of the EMU – Slovakia, Slovenia, Malta and Cyprus – which has, to the author’s knowledge, not been studied thus far due to their recent joining, and controls drawn from the European Union, this paper finds a positive relationship between joining the EMU and trade with EMU partners but not with non‐EMU partners.     

The Constitutional Structures of the National Political Economy: Barrier to or Precondition for European Integration?

The Court of Justice of the European Union is increasingly dedicated to the pursuit of economic efficiency. As this article will demonstrate, this has led to diagonal conflict between European legal pronouncements on the free movement of labour within a services regime and national jurisprudence on democratically-legitimated public procurement policies within distinct state aids regimes. Where once the CJEU treated public procurement as a distinctive part of the EU’s state aids regime, or one which might be reconciled with redistributive ethical and social concerns maintained at national level, the application of the EU services regime to procurement has placed this traditional understanding in doubt. This re-alignment, however, as well as the supranational-national conflict that it has created, reflects both the deeper mismatch both between European economic and national social competences, as well as friction between national and European conceptions of constitutional legitimacy. Such tensions must be overcome in order to secure continuing legal integration within Europe.     

The Unifying Role of the Single Currency

Perhaps the single most tangible symbol of the European Union is its single currency, the euro. Within the European Economic and Monetary Union, it was seen as a tool to ensure that European integration would be truly irreversible. However, the euro has also contributed to cleavages and asymmetries. This article reviews whether the euro can fulfil the unifying role envisioned for it, examing the importance of the euro in four crucial European relationships.     

Consumer Insolvency in the European Legal Context

Consumer credit, as an important aspect of the free movement of capital, has for a long time now been subject to European Union regulations. However, one important aspect of consumer credit, over-indebtedness, has not been acknowledged in the Consumer Credit directives of 1978 and 2009, nor is there any other European Union law instrument that addresses over-indebtedness or insolvency of consumers. The only European-level document addressing the problem of over-indebtedness of ordinary people is the Council of Europe Recommendation of 2007. In European Union law, over-indebtedness can and should be approached from several angles. The Insolvency Regulation (2000) does not directly address situations facing the consumer debtor and leaves it up to the discretion of the Member States to include or exclude insolvency proceedings for consumer debtors regarding the scope of the Regulation. There can be little doubt that the European Union has a legal basis for action in this field, and it has also used its competence in a number of related issues, such as general insolvency law and enforcement of judgments. Case C-461/11, in which Advocate General delivered her opinion on Sept 13^th, 2012 shows that national insolvency procedures for natural persons may constitute a restriction on the freedom of movement. This article argues that, even in the absence of a European Union law instrument, the Member States should recognize debt adjustment judgments made in another Member State and that there is a need for a regulation in the European Union law in this field.     

Künftige Finanzplanung der EU — neue Prioritäten,höhere Effizienz?

On May 2, 2018, the European Commission proposed a limited and realistic increase for the EU’s next multi-annual financial framework 2021–2027. The draft implies a roughly constant common budget for the EU with a focus on European stabilisation policy and the provision of centralised public goods provision rather than agriculture and cohesion. This shift mirrors the priorities spelled out by Emanuel Macron. However, the Commission combined this pragmatism with its interest in improving budgetary flexibility and autonomy. There is no doubt that the EU27 faces difficult negotiations. EU Member States’ initial reactions to the European Commision’s recent proposals were dominated by juste retour considerations reminiscent of past negotiations. Strengthening EU expenditure through European added value and fundamentally reforming their own resource system, including the introduction of tax-based own resources, will end the deadlock surrounding net position thinking. A more fundamental view on the fiscal policy of the European Union is given in the last paper, which states that the EU requires a complete overhaul of the economic governance structure. It offers a tentative approach that avoids moral hazard problems as well as fallacies about conditional backstops during times of crisis.     

A new innovation paradigm: European cohesion policy and the retreat of public science in countries in Europe's scientific periphery

This article seeks to undertake a critical assessment of the changing position of public science in the entrepreneurial ecosystem of the countries on the periphery of European research. These countries are driven by new innovation paradigm based on entrepreneurship, which are implemented within the European Smart specialization strategy (S3). This article argues that S3 is widely implemented in the cohesion countries and, while it provides substantial resources for science, technology, and innovation, it fails to provide sustainability in the public research sector. This has direct implications for policies concerning innovation and entrepreneurial ecosystems. In order to prove the thesis, the article provides theoretical argumentation for emergence of a new innovation paradigm, driven by the rise of the entrepreneurial ecosystem, its incorporation into S3, and a consequent retreat of science policy in favor of entrepreneurial policy. The empirical analysis is focused on the funding trends seen in the business and public research sectors over the last decade (2008–2017), which have clearly shown that S3 has not contributed, despite expectations, to an increase in public expenditure for science. This signifies S3's neglect of public research within entrepreneurial ecosystems and challenges the ability of S3 to reduce wide disparities in research and innovation performance across the European Union. This ultimately endangers the innovation potential of the entrepreneurial ecosystem itself.     

欧盟东扩后的贸易效应对我国纺织品出口的影响和挑战

欧盟是世界上第二大纺织品服装进口市场，每年进口的纺织品占全球总进口量的31％，就进出口贸易总量来说，欧盟是全球纺织品服装的最大贸易方，在世界纺织品服装贸易中扮演着非常重要的角色。中国是对欧盟纺织品和服装出口最多的国家，是欧盟纺织品最大的供应国。欧盟东扩的实现将对我国纺织产品的出口产生重大影响，因此本通过对欧盟东扩后产生的贸易效应的分析来说明东扩后可能对我国纺织业出口产生的一定影响。     

The new frontier in state aid control

State aid is in principle prohibited in the European Union, with a few exceptions provided for in the Treaty. Recently, a judgement by the European Court of Justice has weakened that prohibition by narrowing the concept of state aid. Criticism of this judgement so far has been based solely on legal grounds. This paper carries out an economic assessment of the judgement and argues that it is based on faulty economic premises. The author proposes an alternative method for dealing with compensatory measures so as to close the loophole opened up by the judgement. The author is grateful to Jean-Paul Keppenne for comments on an earlier draft, to Kirtikumar Mehta for stimulating discussions on the issue of compensation and to Anne-Mieke den Teuling for research assistance. The author is solely responsible for the views expressed in this paper.     

The Information Society – the EU Framework

On January 1 1998, the crucial European Commission Directive concerning full competition in telecommunications markets comes into force. In this abridged version of the last of the 1997 Stockton Lectures, the Member of the Commission who was responsible for it outlines the route to its implementation. This story is part of the broader issue of the way the European Union (EU) has approached the questions raised by the evolving information society. Starting with the establishment of the internal single European market in 1992, the author traces the elimination of public monopolies in telecommunications, the Commission's changing approach to regulation and the way that public fears have been allayed by use of pilot projects. He then examines the significance of technological convergence and globalisation for economics, politics and culture.