Electronic Commerce and the Future for SMEs in a Global Market-Place: Networking and Public Policies

This paper explores three inter-related issues: globalisation; the role of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs); and electronic commerce (e-commerce). A central question is whether e-commerce offers advantages to SMEs that may facilitate their access to global markets and help them overcome the disadvantages they face vis-à-vis large transnational corporations (TNCs)? The paper starts by briefly considering the extent of globalisation and its relationship to free trade. We then go on to consider recent developments in e-commerce, focusing on the key issue of e-payment systems. Differences in the requirements of large and smaller firms are identified, and we identify a number of key issues concerning access of smaller firms to e-payment systems and the (virtual) market place, and outline their implications for regulatory policy. Our analysis highlights the importance of network externalities, and institutional factors affecting trust and the relationships amongst different economic actors. This leads to a consideration of networking and public policies more broadly. One of the central conclusions of our analysis is that there are important synergies between e-commerce (virtual) networks and (real) production networks. This suggests that policy makers and smaller firms should think in terms of extending existing, and catalysing new, real production networks to incorporate e-payment systems for networks of firms in order to facilitate their access to virtual markets.

     

Revisiting Wireless Internet Connectivity: 5G vs Wi-Fi 6

In recent years, significant attention has been directed toward the fifth generation of wireless broadband connectivity known as ‘5G’, currently being deployed by Mobile Network Operators. Surprisingly, there has been considerably less attention paid to ‘Wi-Fi 6’, the new IEEE 802.1ax standard in the family of Wireless Local Area Network technologies with features targeting private, edge-networks. This paper revisits the suitability of cellular and Wi-Fi in delivering high-speed wireless Internet connectivity. Both technologies aspire to deliver significantly enhanced performance, enabling each to deliver much faster wireless broadband connectivity, and provide further support for the Internet of Things and Machine-to-Machine communications, positioning the two technologies as technical substitutes in many usage scenarios. We conclude that both are likely to play important roles in the future, and simultaneously serve as competitors and complements. We anticipate that 5G will remain the preferred technology for wide-area coverage, while Wi-Fi 6 will remain the preferred technology for indoor use, thanks to its much lower deployment costs. However, the traditional boundaries that differentiated earlier generations of cellular and Wi-Fi are blurring. Proponents of one technology may argue for the benefits of their chosen technology displacing the other, requesting regulatory policies that would serve to tilt the marketplace in their favour. We believe such efforts need to be resisted, and that both technologies have important roles to play in the marketplace, based on the needs of heterogeneous use cases. Both technologies should contribute to achieving the goal of providing affordable, reliable, and ubiquitously available high-capacity wireless broadband connectivity.     

Against the New Economic Imperialism: Some Reflections

Classical political economy recognised that what needed analysing, explaining, and acting on was an economic system inextricably linked to the wider political and social systems. Smith and Ricardo, as well as Marx, saw class and the distribution of income as key. Neoclassical economics replaced these social and collective categories with the individual consumer and the marginal product of labour as the fundamental analytical categories—the "political" having been discarded. Yet even one of the founders of neoclassical economics, Alfred Marshall, would barely recognise nor accept what is today presented as economic analysis, ignoring as it does the key industrial and organisational detail underlying production. The "new political economy" claims to incorporate insights from other disciplines. But far from enriching economic analysis, these new strands of theory simply impose the assumptions and methods of neoclassical economics. We argue that this new economic imperialism needs to be replaced with a genuinely multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary approach to analysing economic issues.     

Foreign and domestic multinational presence in the UK

The determinants of multinational presence in Uk manufacturing industry in 1979 are analysed. It is argued that maultinational presence may result from strategic interaction as well as other firm and industry characteristics. The determinants of both foreign and Uk multinational presence are estimated using a dataset that enables both types of multinational to be indentified. Results show an important effect of both scale and concentration on multinational presence.     

The power of collaborative deliberation in stakeholder dialogue seminars

This paper quantifies the added value of using collaborative deliberation as an engagement element in a stakeholder dialogue seminar arranged over 3 days in Norway in 2015 with a wide range of national, regional and local stakeholders. The topic addressed was the possible impacts in western Norway from a hypothetical nuclear accident in the UK. The first day included information provision while the following 2 days were devoted to collaborative deliberation on the issue. Two questionnaire surveys were used to measure the degree of learning, networking, involvement and problem solving reported by the participants after the first day and the third day. The results from the surveys clearly suggest that collaborative deliberation gave an added value compared to information provision alone in our stakeholder dialogue seminar.     

John Braithwaite: Regulation,crime, freedom; Peter Cartwright: Consumer protection and the criminal law: Law,theory, and policy in the UK

Journal of Consumer Policy -     

Quality Regulation in European Private Law

The EC Directive on certain aspects of the sale of consumer goods and associated guarantees obliges sellers to deliver goods which are in conformity with the contract, and gives rights to the consumer where the goods are not in conformity with the contract. It also contains provisions as to the binding nature and transparency of commercial guarantees. The implementation date for this European private law quality regime was 1 January 2002. This article considers the policies and legal concepts that have influenced and will influence this quality regime, questions associated with the general mode of implementation, and some key features of the regime.     

Innovation and the Economy

Unemployment has remained at relatively high levels across most European countries for a generation now. There have been a number of suggested explanations for this, with correspondingly different policy implications. Two of the major hypotheses relate, first, to the impact on the European economies from increased international competition, and 'globalisation' more generally, and, secondly, to the effects of new technology and innovation. The effects of both globalisation and technology on growth and employment in Europe have been researched over the past two years through an EU-funded project, the results of which, relating in particular to innovation, are reported in this Special Issue of the International Review of Applied Economics. (The results relating to globalisation were reported in a Special Issue of the Journal of Interdisciplinary Economics , Volume 13.) It is clear from the empirical work reported that the effects of technological innovation have been mixed. There is no doubt that some innovation has had a negative effect on employment, without the compensatingly positive effects that new technology usually brings in its wake. However, in high technology manufacturing sectors there is scope for boosting both productivity and employment. But this requires an appropriate policy environment, conducive to increased investment in capital, R&D and the workforce itself.