Causing people to take offense can occur when a marketer undertakes a controversial advertising campaign. What can make this a particularly important issue is when companies make what for many individuals is a controversial product, like condoms, erectile dysfunction drugs, feminine hygiene products and certain kinds of underwear. Such companies manufacture legitimate products for their target ...

Discussions of the economics of scholarly communication are usually devoted to Open Access, rising journal prices, publisher profits, and boycotts. That ignores what seems a much more important development in this market. Publishers, through the oft-reviled Big Deal packages, are providing much greater and more egalitarian access to the journal literature, an approximation to true Open Access. ...

Ð In developing countries, urban clusters of informal ®rms such as brick kilns and leather tanneries can create severe pollution problems. These ®rms are, however, quite dicult to regulate for a variety of technical and political reasons. Drawing on the literature, this paper ®rst develops a list of feasible environmental management policies. It then examines how these policies have fared in f...

Consider an exchange economy in which consumers have private information (represented by their types). Issues of resource allocation in such an economy concern how the allocation is determined by the information state (profile of agents’ types). An allocation rule, in which the (possibly random) allocation depends on the information state of the economy, can then be viewed as a direct mechanism...

Relationship marketing is in vogue. And why not? The new, increasingly efficient ways that companies have of understanding and responding to customers' needs and preferences seemingly allow them to build more meaningful connections with consumers than ever before. These connections promise to benefit the bottom line by reducing costs and increasing revenue. Unfortunately, a close look suggests ...

One of the main approaches we have for studying the progressive divergence of understandings around a risk issue is that of social risk amplification. This article describes a case study of a particular environmental contaminant, a chemical flame retardant that could be interpreted as having produced a risk amplifying process. It describes in particular how a group of industrial organizations a...

In both the popular press and modern identity politics, societal groups are clamoring for respect, o+ en in lieu of economic redistribution (see, for example, Fraser, 1995; Honneth, 1995, 2001; Miller, 1993; Taylor, 1994), and individual citizens are calling for respect in civil discourse (e.g., Carter, 1998). “History echoes with passionate pleas for justice and charity, but in our times, incr...

A popular form of action to curb child labor and uphold international labor standards in general is a product boycott by consumers. There are labeling agencies that inform us if, for instance, a carpet or a hand-stitched soccer ball is free of child labor. The presence of a consumer boycott will typically mean that products tainted by child labor will command a lower price on the market than on...

The issue of child and forced labor employed in the production goods has been at a forefront public debate recent decades with millions victims nearly all countries being affected. This paper examines whether information about use affects their imports to United States. I investigate this question using largest naming shaming strategy ever implemented world-wide: inclusion on U.S. government’s ...

To date, much of the scholarly literature on anti-foreign boycotts in prewar China focused cigarettes. However, foreign banks were also targeted, particularly regarding their most visible infringement Chinese sovereignty: banknotes. Piecing together note circulation data smaller European and American operating Shanghai is a work progress. In this research note, I present provisional about three...