This paper investigates to what extent fair trade programmes, are indeed ‘fair’. This is accomplished by comparing fair trade with free trade and protectionist trade regimes on their compliance of the criteria set by the fair trade movement itself. This comparison is made using comparative cost based and economies of scale models. It is found that whether or not fair trade is superior to free t...

This paper uses a heterogeneous …rms model to scrutinize Fair Trade’s aim to help the most disadvantaged producers in developing countries. Incorporating important aspects of Fair Trade in a two-good heterogeneous …rm model we show that only the most productive …rms will join Fair Trade arrangements. Higher required production standards and entry costs make Fair Trade not viable for low-product...

Fair Trade is a well-known concept that intends to improve the livelihoods of small-scale producers in developing countries. Market growth in Fair Trade has been very impressive since the 1990s and European markets have shown steady expansion in Fair Trade products, albeit with demand for certain products seemingly stagnating. Switzerland is a major market for many Fair Trade products. On a per...

We consider the age-old problem of allocating items among different agents in a way that is efficient and fair. Two papers, by Dolev et al. and Ghodsi et al., have recently studied this problem in the context of computer systems. Both papers had similar models for agent preferences, but advocated different notions of fairness. We formalize both fairness notions in economic terms, extending them...