The Affordability of Energy: How Much Protection for the Vulnerable Consumers?

Affordability is a new “alien” concept penetrating the field of contract and consumer law as one of the obligations related to the provision of “universal services” or “public service” in the context of services of general economic interest. Affordability becomes an important element of the European social model (using Scharf’s terminology; Scharf, J Common Mark Stud 40:645–670, 2002) and its constitutional dimension will be confirmed by the Treaty of Lisbon and the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (EU). The major European Commission policy tool for ensuring the Affordability of Energy Supply is, on the one hand, functioning competition, which should bring about reasonable prices in general, and on the other hand, regulation targeted at so-called vulnerable consumers. First tested in the UK, it was later spread mainly by the requirements of the Second Energy Package in other Member States (MS). The Third Energy Package (to be implemented by March 2011) further develops this idea and clarifies the set of obligations that the protection of consumers and ensuring the Affordability of Energy Supply require in the understanding of the EU legislator. One could speculate to what extent this is a reaction to the fact that some MS and, in particular, the new MS did not implement the consumer protection requirements of the Second Energy Package, but rather opted for very different regulatory strategies. This paper will examine different regulatory strategies employed in four MS (the UK, France, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia), with special focus on the situation in the two new MS, in order to respond to the question as to whether these different regulatory strategies provide what is promised, i.e., affordable energy for all.     

Sectoral Effects of News Shocks

This paper argues that an aggregate news shock reveals news about technological improvements in the durable goods sector. Better technological prospects translate into large responses of the fundamentals in the durable goods sector; much larger than the responses of the fundamentals in the non‐durable goods sector. These better technological prospects, contrary to common belief, do not induce short‐run comovement among fundamentals within either of the two sectors. The behaviour of inventories, an important margin that durable goods producers can use to buffer news shocks, proves to be crucial for reconciling the effects of news shocks in a two‐sector model with the data.     

Going beyond the traditional destination competitiveness – reflections on a smart destination in the current research

ABSTRACT

This paper reviews the literature on tourism destination competitiveness from different aspects, focusing on comparative and competitive advantages. Also, the paper highlights the importance of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in tourism destinations and their increasing impact on the achievement of destination competitiveness. Thanks to the wider application of ICTs in tourism, tourists nowadays are well informed and have access to global market which creates a new dynamic environment by creating a smart demand. Since smartness emphasizes on ICT-based tools, including smartness integration for value co-creation, it can increase and enhance destination competitiveness. In this regard, special emphasis is placed on exploring the core components of smartness and smart tourism destination.     

Economic growth and carbon emissions: evidence from CIVETS countries

ABSTRACT

This paper examines whether a long-run relationship exists between CO₂ emissions and selected variables: real gross domestic product per capita, inward stock of foreign direct investments, gross fixed capital formation, industry, value added and energy use per capita for Colombia, Indonesia, Viet Nam, Egypt, Turkey and South Africa countries in the period of 1989–2016. We used panel unit root testing, followed by panel cointegration tests and panel causality. The results clearly prove the existence of a bidirectional long-run causal relationship between all the variables except between CO₂ emissions and GDP and CO₂ emissions and GFCF. Major finding of the short-run causality analysis is that CO₂ emission in the short run does not result in changes of other variables. On the other hand, all variables except foreign direct investments (FDI) cause the changes in the CO₂ emissions, and there is a positive bidirectional causal relationship between GDP and FDI, between GFCF and FDI, and between GFCF and IVA. Finally, positive unidirectional causal relationship also exists, running from GDP to IVA, GDP to ENUSE, IVA to FDI and ENUSE to FDI.     

The Importance of Intrinsic and Extrinsic Sparkling Wine Characteristics and Behavior of Sparkling Wine Consumers in Croatia

ABSTRACT

Sparkling wines accounted for 7.7% of the total wine consumption in 2011 in the world. Even though sparkling wine remains a long way behind still wine in total volume of production, world consumption of sparkling wine is expected to grow at a faster rate with an 8.5% increase by 2016. Although Croatia is a country with a high residual per capita consumption, the share of sparkling wine consumption compared with total wine consumption amounts only 1.3%. To collect data on Croatian sparkling wine consumers’ behavior and attitudes, we performed online research with 273 consumers. The research confirmed the low frequency of sparkling wine consumption. The most important characteristics of sparkling wines for Croatian consumers are their intrinsic characteristics (taste, smell) together with price:quality ratio, while visual appearance, expert reviews, or wine prizes are less important. Consumption of sparkling wines is generally associated with specific celebrations. Due to such perception of exclusive wine use, there is a need to break down this prejudice by better sparkling wine promotion through wine-tasting events, seminars, and gastronomy offers, especially for younger consumers.     

Product involvement in do-it-yourself maintenance injury

Abstract

PROBLEM Numerous activities to promote bicycle safety have been implemented in Norway. The overall effect of these activities has not been evaluated.

method Information about cases of bicycle-related injuries occurring in 1990-1993 was obtained from prospective registration of all injuries treated by hospitals and emergency clinics in four urban centers in NORWAY. Incidence was calculated per number of cyclists, based on data obtained from the 1992 National Bicycle Survey. Temporal changes in injury severity and in age-specific incidence (per bicycle riders) of all injuries, upper-head injuries, other injuries, injuries due to bicycle-motor vehicle collision, and injuries leading to inpatient treatment were analyzed by logistic regression analysis.

RESULTS 3,893 injuries occurred in the study population in 1990-1993. The average annual incidence was 33.1 per 10,000 population aged 4 years and higher, or 47.9 per 10,000 bicyclists. No significant secular trends were found for any of the analyzed parameters.

CONCLUSIONS Bicycle safety promotion measures implemented during 1990-1993 did not significantly reduce the risk of bicycle-related injury in Norway. Effective bicycle safety programs should be implemented, based on the positive experiences from other countries. Injury surveillance systems appear to be a useful tool for evaluating injury prevention programs.     

Understanding the Heterogeneity of Generation Y's Preferences for Travelling: a Conjoint Analysis Approach

The unique motives of young travellers make this market segment very important to the key objectives of the global tourism plan. Accordingly, it is important to understand better the main drivers that affect their choice of a tourism offer. This paper introduces conjoint analysis as an appropriate tool for evaluating the preferences of travellers. The survey was conducted on a sample of 514 respondents. To isolate homogeneous young traveller segments, preference‐based segmentation was performed on the conjoint data. Based on the study findings, a marketing strategy for each identified market segment is suggested. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Inflation Sensitivity To Monetary Policy: What Has Changed since the Early 1980s?

Have conventional monetary policy instruments maintained the same ability to accommodate undesirable effects of shocks throughout the postwar period? Or has the changed economic environment characterizing the last 30 years diminished the sensitivity of macroeconomic volatility to systematic changes in the conduct of monetary policy? The answer is no to the first question and, consequently, yes to the second question. We estimate a medium‐scale New‐Keynesian model in two subsamples, 1955–79 and 1984–2012, and find that the sensitivity of inflation variance to changes in conventional monetary policy has declined. We document that the changed properties of the labour market largely contributed to this decline.     

Efficient location of industrial activity cells in a global supply chain

Inefficient locations for production, distribution and reverse logistics plants will result in excess costs no matter how well material requirements planning (MRP), inventory control, distribution and information sharing decisions are optimized. In this paper we study ways in which aspect of activity cell location decisions can be analyzed within an extended MRP model. This model has previously been extended by including distribution and reverse logistics components in a compact form, presented in Grubbström et al. (2007). Our aim is to demonstrate the basic differences between an approach to location problems with MRP “under the same roof” as the global supply chain, in which transportation time delays and direct transportation costs have substantial influence. We discuss possibilities of how to present location aspects in the supply chain model obtained from combining input–output analysis and Laplace transforms in four sub-systems, namely manufacturing, distribution, consumption and reverse logistics, and show how the transportation costs and lead time influenced by the location of all these activities affect the resulting net present value (NPV). Our aim is to build a model supporting decisions concerning the structure of a supply chain as an alternative to a mixed integer programming formulation. The model developed is based on the use of continuous functions describing spatial distributions of cost and customer demand. Continuous functions are embedded in the MRP extension previously introduced in Grubbström et al. (2007).Location decisions influence (i) production costs, because timing influences the cost of activities involved in creating a product, cf. (Grubbström and Bogataj, submitted for publication), and (ii) logistics costs, which refer to the procurement and physical transmission of materials through the supply chain. In this current paper we wish to combine both of these aspects into a comprehensive model, where we show the interaction between the “space of flows” and the “space of places” as Giovanni Arrighi distinguishes one from the other in his book The Long Twentieth Century.     

Understanding the Enforcement Malfunction of Consumer Legislation in Serbia

The new Serbian Law on Consumer Protection was passed in October 2010, and its enactment and general outlook may be attributed to the continuous political pressure and financial and technical support by the European Union (EU). This paper outlines several factors that may have contributed to the weakness of enforcement in Serbia, so that while consumer legislation is fairly harmonized with the EU acquis, national standards of consumer protection lag behind those in the EU. These tentative explanations of the enforcement malfunction include (1) the lack of institutional capacity to receive the professional and technical support of the EU, (2) external pressure as the main incentive for legislative change, (3) the lack of belief in the social relevance of legislative changes as such, (4) the deficiency of the enforcement mechanisms and the lack of appreciation of their importance, and (5) the absence of cooperation between the stakeholders and institutional resistance to change. Consumer protection is not an exceptional field characterized by the risks of enforcement failure. Moreover, the difficulties described in the article are not limited to Serbia, as they also happen in other jurisdictions, even if in different shapes and forms. The success of aligning the national norms to those of the EU and the success of legal transplants in general are always quite uncertain. In that sense, the case of consumer policy in Serbia should be understood as an instance that may illuminate a class of phenomena.