Passengers,consumers, and travellers: The rise of passenger rights in EC transport law and its repercussions for Community consumer law and policy

EC transport law is set to be complemented by a series of Regulations giving rights to passengers for almost every mode of transport. These Regulations not only give transport law a distinct consumer dimension but also add new elements to European private law. This paper attempts to provide a horizontal, or intermodal, survey of these Regulations, adopted and proposed. It is argued that passenger law, although originating separately and remaining a sector distinct from other fields of law, has become part of a wider, three-stranded notion of European consumer policy deserving due attention as the force most dynamically expanding the area of Community law of contracts and of torts. The paper will point to the elements of consumer contract law and the law on travel and tourism related to passenger transport and elaborate on the basics for finding a common notion of the key terms like “passenger” and “damage” for Community law. It concludes with some points for further reflection.

Alitalia – The failure of a national carrier

The paper examines the case of Alitalia, Italy’s former flag carrier, as a case of a state-managed failure. The history of the airline is characterized by a continuous decline in its competitive position since the progressive liberalization of the European aviation market. The root cause of this decline lies in the carrier being mainly used as a political tool rather than operating as a competitive firm. In a liberalized market this doomed Alitalia to failure, which was artificially delayed by numerous state financial and regulatory interventions. The paper starts with a historical overview of the most important events in recent Alitalia history. Thereafter the main causes of the airline’s weak competitive position relative to other European carriers are analyzed. We argue that the underlying causes of the decline were continuous political protection, lack of strategic views in favor of short-term objectives, and poor managerial decisions.     

Qualitative Text Analysis Supported by Conceptual Data Systems

Content analysis as a method in social sciences is used to systematically explore textual data. Data resulting from content analysis can be made transparent by saving it in a conceptual data system. This supports its interpretation and reexamination and the process of interpretative theory building. By means of an example of a conceptual data system from musicology, the possibilities and restrictions of this new approach in computer-aided qualitative text research are analyzed. Finally, the approach is discussed as a general method of qualitative formal theory building in the context of content analysis.     

Quantum Theory and Social Economics:

A bstract . The holistic approach of quantum theory is investigated as a tool for social economists to analyze and to interpret socioeconomic reality and paradigms. The link between quantum theory and the social economist's approach to socioeconomic reality, i.e. , the "what is," rests on the premise that each element of the socioeconomic universe relates to the whole system and vice versa. In other words, the meaning of each part is to be found in its implicit reflection of the whole of reality; it has no meaning exclusive of the whole. In terms of quantum theory, investigations of microeconomic processes are interwoven with the macroeconomic frame of reference of the observer. The very act of observation is to be considered as an integral part of the observed system.     

Inflation dynamics and nominal adjustment in the Baltic States

The paper seeks to explain the inflationary dynamics in the Baltic countries since the mid-1990s. Single-equation estimations generally yield poor results, while panel data estimations provide statistically and economically satisfactory findings. The main result is that the observed gradual disinflation can to a large extent be explained by adjustment to international prices. Stringent fixed exchange rate systems have exerted downward pressure on inflation both directly and via expectations to future inflation. Measures of excess capacity in the labour market have no effect on inflation, while industrial output gaps have some explanatory power. Real oil price shocks have an immediate but short-lived impact on inflation.     

Interest rate causality and asymmetry in the EMS

This paper investigates the hypothesis of an asymmetric EMS under German leadership in the period from 1983 to 1991. The approach adopted was to undertake Granger-causality tests on daily observations of changes in interest rates. For the group of core countries we find that, in recent years, the EMS has operated asymmetrically. This asymmetry has developed over the years and was not evident prior to 1987.     

The integrated programme for commodities

The gains from stabilizing commodity prices are likely to be rather small. The distribution of such gains among producers and consumers is uncertain. Compensatory financing is a cheaper and more effective means of dealing with the problem of fluctuating export earnings. The developing countries have some scope for cartel pricing in the tropical beverages, but hardly in any of the other ten ‘core’ commodities. A common fund is not an economically essential feature of the commodity programme, and will not lead to savings in terms of resources. As a group the ‘core’ commodities do not face serious import barriers in the developed countries. In sum, the integrated commodity programme, if implemented, may produce some, but probably rather limited benefits to the developing countries. Some of these could be at the cost of the developed countries, and it is not clear if the whole scheme is a positive-negative-, or zero-sum game.     

Capital flows and growth dynamics in Central and Eastern Europe

This article assesses the importance of capital flows as measured by the current account balance for the growth dynamics of the EU countries from Central and Eastern Europe. Economic growth in these countries was on average relatively high before the global financial crisis but markedly lower after the crisis. Panel data econometrics using annual data for 1997–2015 point to the contemporaneous current account balance having a sizeable negative effect on annual GDP growth. Estimations using many control variables and instrumental variables suggest that the negative effect is mainly demand driven. Counterfactual simulations show that growth rates in all CEE countries would have been lower in the absence of capital flows, and this applies particularly to the countries with the most disadvantageous starting points.     

Self-selection and variations in the laboratory measurement of other-regarding preferences across subject pools: evidence from one college student and two adult samples

We measure the other-regarding behavior in samples from three related populations in the upper Midwest of the United States: college students, non-student adults from the community surrounding the college, and adult trainee truckers in a residential training program. The use of typical experimental economics recruitment procedures made the first two groups substantially self-selected. Because the context reduced the opportunity cost of participating dramatically, 91 % of the adult trainees solicited participated, leaving little scope for self-selection in this sample. We find no differences in the elicited other-regarding preferences between the self-selected adults and the adult trainees, suggesting that selection is unlikely to bias inferences about the prevalence of other-regarding preferences among non-student adult subjects. Our data also reject the more specific hypothesis that approval-seeking subjects are the ones most likely to select into experiments. Finally, we observe a large difference between self-selected college students and self-selected adults: the students appear considerably less pro-social.