an empirical investigation of coalitional bargaining procedures abstract models of government formation processes in multi party democracies are usually highly sensitive to the rules that govern the selection of formateurs i e the parties selected to propose a potential government the theoretical literature has focused on two selection rules selection proportional to seat share and selection in order of seat share in this paper we use a new data set on government formations in 11 parliamentary democracies to empirically assess which selection rule most closely approximates the data we find that while there is little empirical support for selection in order of seat share proportional selection fits the data well however we also find that a simple alternative that combines the insights of the two selection rules outperforms both of them in their ability to explain the data

explaining party ideological stances we apply the iterative algorithm by merrill and adams political analysis 9 347 361 2001 to compute the optimal positions of vote maximizing parties along a one dimensional space for a large number of elections this allows us to systematically evaluate factors that push parties toward more centrifugal locations in equilibrium our findings largely corroborate expectations suggested by the theoretical literature albeit with one notable exception the relative size of a partisan constituency reduces rather than enhances the likelihood of a party having an extreme optimal position we then compare derived equilibrium positions with actual party positions with the aim of understanding the nature of electoral incentives and offering insights about party system competition in particular we show that the age of a party the party family to which it belongs post election expectations and internal rules for candidate and leader selection are all factors that increase the probability of a party approaching the position predicted by pure vote maximizing considerations

multiparty electoral competition in the netherlands and germany a model based on multinomial probit a typical assumption of electoral models of party competition is that parties adopt policy positions so as to maximize expected vote share here we use euro barometer survey data and european elite study data from 1979 for the netherlands and germany to construct a stochastic model of voter response based on multinomial probit estimation for each of these countries we estimate a pure spatial electoral voting model and a joint spatial model the latter model also includes individual voter and demographic characteristics the pure spatial models for the two countries quite accurately described the electoral response as a stochastic function of party positions we use these models to perform a thought experiment so as to estimate the expected vote maximizing party positions we go on to propose a model of internal party decision making based both on pre election electoral estimation and post election coalition bargaining this model suggests why the various parties in the period in question did not adopt vote maximizing positions we argue that maximizing expected vote will not in general be a rational party strategy in multiparty political systems which are based on proportional representation

what will consumers pay for social product features the importance of ethical consumerism to many companies worldwide has increased dramatically in recent years ethical consumerism encompasses the importance of non traditional and social components of a company s products and business process to strategic success such as environmental protectionism child labor practices and so on the present paper utilizes a random utility theoretic experimental design to provide estimates of the relative value selected consumers place on the social features of products

averting crisis assessing measures to manage financial integration in emerging economies the asian crisis provides heterodox economists with the opportunity to investigate counterfactually whether the financial policies they have proposed would have averted the crisis the paper argues that neo liberal financial integration introduces distinct risks to emerging economies currency flight fragility contagion and sovereignty risks the paper presents the financial policies endorsed by the heterodoxy transactions taxes trip wires and or speed bumps convertibility restrictions the chilean model and a publicly managed mutual fund the paper considers whether these policies mitigate risks and whether they could have prevented the asian crisis and the transmission thereof the paper concludes with policies to avert future crises copyright 2003 oxford university press

centripetal and centrifugal incentives under different electoral systems inaseminalarticle cox 1990 suggestedthatelectoralsystemswithlargerdistrictmagnitudesprovideincentivesforparties to advocate more extreme policy positions in this article we put this proposition to the test informed by recent advances in spatial models of party competition we introduce a design that embeds the effect of electoral rules in the utility function of voters we then estimate the equilibrium location of parties as the weight voters attach to the expected distribution of seats and votes changes our model predicts that electoral rules affect large and small parties in different ways we find centripetal effects only for parties that are favorably biased by electoral rules by contrast smaller parties see their vote share decline and are pushed toward more extreme equilibrium positions evidence from 13 parliamentary democracies supports model predictions along with testing the incentives provided by electoral rules results carry implications for the strategies of vote maximizing parties and for the role of small parties in multiparty competition

models of currency crises with self fulfilling features the discomfort a government suffers from speculation against its currency determines the strategic incentives of speculators and the scope for multiple currency market equilibria after describing an illustrative model in which high unemployment may cause an exchange rate crisis with self fulfilling features the paper reviews some other self reinforcing mechanisms recent econometric evidence seems consistent with the practical importance of these mechanisms

a developing country view of the current global crisis what should not be forgotten and what should be done macroeconomic theory will surely be affected by the current global crisis there are signs that some old theories and insights will have a comeback this paper argues that among them economists should not forget the lessons that have been learnt from three decades of several financial crises in developing countries we emphasise two important lessons first preventing crises in developing countries requires not only the regulation of domestic financial systems but also a consistent set of macroeconomic policies in particular we stress the need for consistency between the exchange rate rule the capital account regime and the domestic financial market regulations second financial crises in developing countries tend to worsen both the balance of payments and the fiscal balance traditional adjustment policies tend to exacerbate the recessive trends in output and employment this is just the opposite of what is required and what governments in developed countries are able to do developing countries should push for an agenda that helps them deal with these problems

issues economics and the dynamics of multiparty elections the british 1987 general election we offer a model of multiparty elections that combines voters retrospective economic evaluations with consideration of parties issue positions and the issue preferences of voters we show that both policy issues and the state of the economy matter in british elections in 1987 voters made a largely retrospective evaluation of the conservatives based on economic performance those who rejected the conservative party chose between labour and alliance based on issue positions through simulations we move the parties in the issue space and reestimate vote shares as well as hypothesize an alternative distribution of views on the economy and we show that labour had virtually no chance to win with a centrist party as a viable alternative the predictions from our 1987 simulations are supported in an analysis of the 1992 british election we argue for multinomial probit in studying three party elections because it allows for a richer formulation of politics than do competing methods

bargaining in legislatures bargaining in legislatures is conducted according to formal rules specifying who may make proposals and how they will be decided legislative outcomes depend on those rules and on the structure of the legislature although the social choice literature provides theories about voting equilibria it does not endogenize the formation of the agenda on which the voting is based and rarely takes into account the institutional structure found in legislatures in our theory members of the legislature act noncooperatively in choosing strategies to serve their own districts explicitly taking into account the strategies members adopt in response to the sequential nature of proposal making and voting the model permits the characterization of a legislative equilibrium reflecting the structure of the legislature and also allows consideration of the choice of elements of that structure in a context in which the standard institution free model of social choice theory yields no equilibrium

why candidate divergence should be expected to be just as great or even greater in competitive seats as in non competitive ones basic downsian theory predicts candidate convergence toward the views of the median voter in two candidate elections common journalistic wisdom moreover leads us to expect these centripetal pressures to be strongest when elections are expected to be close yet the available evidence from the us congress disconfirms this prediction to explain this counterintuitive result we develop a spatial model that allows us to understand the complex interactions of political competition partisan loyalties and incentives for voter turnout that can lead office seeking candidates especially candidates in close elections to emphasize policy appeals to their voter base rather than courting the median voter

is there a fair in fair trade social dominance orientation influences perceptions of and preferences for fair trade products in recent years there has been a surge in popularity of the fair trade industry which seeks to improve trading conditions and to promote the rights of marginalized workers although research suggests that fair trade products are perceived as promoting social and economic responsibility some individuals namely those who seek to maintain existing group inequalities i e those high in social dominance orientation or sdo or those induced to think inequality is a good thing may not share this perception across three studies we found that 1 sdo relates negatively to fair trade consumption and 2 this relationship is mediated by the tendency for high sdo individuals to see fair trade products as less compatible with their conception of social justice our findings held after controlling for related individual differences variables and regardless of whether sdo was measured or manipulated implications for how to maximize the likelihood that people will perceive fair trade products as fair are discussed

lessons in disguise multivariate predictive mistakes in collective choice models many political processes can be characterized as repeated collective decisions in which individual choices rendered by the same actors are combined to produce salient outcomes e g voting in legislatures the inherent interdependence among the choices within repeated collective decisions is often missed in statistical analysis i introduce the joint prediction error jpe a grouping of individual decisions that is poorly predicted by a model jpes capture the intersecting information missed by conventional diagnostics i demonstrate the use of jpes on data from two published articles one on u s supreme court voting and another on international defense alliances

fair trade consumption in support of the out group two sets of self transcendence values universalism and benevolence act as a source of motivation for the promotion of the welfare of the other rather than the self this article sought to determine the exact nature of the interaction between these sets of values and the consumption of fair trade products in an earlier study universalism values were found to have a significant influence on fair trade consumption whereas benevolence values did not despite their shared goal and values theory additionally there was supporting evidence in the extant literature that benevolence values should influence fair trade consumption behavior this study took a closer look at the individual values that make up the value categories universalism and benevolence to better understand and describe this universalism benevolence distinction in fair trade consumption it was established that perhaps group membership has an influence on the decision to buy fair trade products specifically it seems that an overriding sense of responsibility to one s own group the in group prevents some consumers from identifying with empathizing with and subsequently sharing resources with fair trade producers members of out groups in far flung corners of the globe it appears that the universalism benevolence distinction in fair trade consumption might also be described as an in group out group distinction

through thick and thin how fair trade consumers have reacted to the global economic recession research on fair trade has flourished over the past decade as fair trade food products have gained popularity amongst consumers in many developed economies this study examines the effects of recessionary economic conditions on fair trade consumers purchasing behaviour an online survey was administered to 306 fair trade consumers from canada the united kingdom and the united states of america the results reveal a discrepancy among fair trade consumers as only consumers that purchase fair trade on an occasional basis adhered to established consumer behaviour norms i e decreasing their purchases of fair trade products and becoming significantly more price aware respondents who actively consume fair trade generally remained loyal to their purchase while some active consumers altered their purchasing behaviour this phenomenon was not common amongst this group as no statistically significant changes were observed differences were also noted among the three countries as the canadian and us fair trade consumers significantly decreased their consumption of fair trade as a result of the recession whereas the uk consumers did not in addition to the research results theoretical and managerial implications will be discussed along with future research directions

multicandidate equilibrium in american elections the united states presidential election of 1992 is anexample of a multicandidate contest involving bothdemocratic and republican candidates using a spatialmodelling approach i analyze candidate policystrategy for such elections under the assumption thatvoters choose according to the multivariate votingmodel of behavioral research this model representsvoters decisions as probabilistic functions of theirpolicy preferences and political partisanship isuggest reasons why partisan voting motivatescandidates to locate near their party s partisans inthe policy space and illustrate this argument withrespect to the 1992 presidential election the resultsof computer simulations suggest that these motivationslead to multicandidate spatial equilibria which arerobust to changes in the model s parameters partisanship appears to be an important source ofstability in multicandidate electoral competition

marketing the third world the contradictions of portfolio investment in the global economy abstract while international portfolio investment pi in emerging markets has flourished during the 1990s the macroeconomic and political dilemmas introduced into these site economies by this development have not been adequately explored this paper presents a keynesian analysis of the effects of these inflows the paper argues that a dependence on pi can constrain the autonomy of macroeconomic policy and introduce increased risk in site economies the paper then applies this framework to recent mexican experience the paper concludes with a call for aggressive management of portfolio investment and outlines some measures toward this end

when politics and models collide estimating models of multiparty elections theory the spatial model of elections can better be represented by using conditional logit models which consider the position of the parties in issue spaces than by multinomial logit models which only consider the position of voters in the issue space the spatial model and random utility models in general suffer from a failure to adequately consider the substitutability of parties sharing similar or identical issue positions hypotheses multinomial logit is not necessarily better than successive applications of binomial logit conditional logit allows for considering more interesting political questions than does multinomial logit the spatial model may not correspond to voter decision making in multiple party settings multinomial probit allows for a relaxation of the iia condition and this should improve estimates of the effect of adding or removing parties methods comparisons of binomial logit multinomial logit conditional logit and multinomial probit on simulated data and survey data from multiparty elections results multinomial logit offers almost no benefits over binomial logit conditional logit is capable of examining movements by parties whereas multinomial logit is not multinomial probit performs better than conditional logit when considering the effects of altering the set of choices available to voters estimation of multinomial probit with more than three choices is feasible

ethics faith and profit exploring the motives of the u s fair trade social entrepreneurs although fair trade has grown exponentially in the u s in recent years we do not have a clear understanding of why small u s firms choose to participate in it to answer this question we use a qualitative case study approach and grounded theory analysis to explore the motivations of 35 small fair trade businesses we find that shared values ethical religious or business and the desire to help others altruism often triggered by a critical incident lead social entrepreneurs to found and sustain fair trade businesses the relationship between shared values and engagement in fair trade and the relationship between altruism and engagement in fair trade are strengthened by four motivating factors direct relationships with producers support for social causes the desire for the preservation of craftsmanship and the desire to share aesthetic products these links are strengthened by four facilitating factors which make fair trade engagement easier the acquisition of business knowledge family member involvement in the firm assistance from faith communities and assistance from the fair trade community additional analysis reveals three types of fair trade social entrepreneurs ethics first or ethical entrepreneurs primarily motivated by human rights and social justice concerns faith first or faithful fair traders motivated primarily by their religious faith and business first or benevolent businesspeople motivated by what they perceive to be an opportunity to build a successful business while simultaneously doing good and helping others

modeling choice of fuelwood source among rural households in malawi a multinomial probit analysis abstract this paper addresses two questions what determines household s choice of fuelwood source and what are the environmental consequences of fuelwood collection choices we address these questions by estimating the multinomial probit model using survey data for households surrounding chimaliro and liwonde forest reserves in malawi after controlling for heterogeneity among households we find strong substitution opportunities across fuelwood collection sources attributes of the fuelwood sources size and species composition and distance to the sources are the most important determinants of fuelwood choice further results show that customary managed forests generate environmental benefits by reducing pressure on both plantation forests and forest reserves these findings support the need to strengthen community based institutions to manage local forest resources

pre electoral commitments and government formation recent studies show that pre electoral commitments and the ideological distance between parties influence government formation but do pre electoral pacts or rejections of party combinations really have an independent impact on the outcome of the government formation game which policy areas matter when parties agree to build a coalition this paper addresses these questions by applying a dataset that includes information on preferred rejected coalition partners and the policy area specific programmatic heterogeneity of all potential coalitions the results show that pre electoral commitments have a significant impact on government formation after controlling for endogeneity problems there is also evidence that not only diversity in economic issues determines the partisan composition of governments

expectations the business cycle and the mexican peso crisis the 1994 95 peso crisis did not display characteristics which allow it to be easily captured by traditional crisis models models based on minsky s financial fragility hypothesis offer more persuasive accounts but have been supported by relatively little direct empirical evidence this paper provides such evidence with particular attention being paid to the role of domestic financial liberalisation in the process minsky s hypotheses about the evolution of expectations over the business cycle are tracked using business survey data in addition crisis indicators are constructed reflecting the changing vulnerability of the economy to shocks the findings support a minskyian interpretation of the crisis copyright 2006 oxford university press

equilibrium strategies for final offer arbitration there is no median convergence final offer arbitration is a procedure for settling disputes between two parties in which an arbitrator chooses the final offer of the party closest to what he considers a fair settlement this procedure is modeled as a two person zero sum game of imperfect information in which the parties are assumed to know the probability distribution of the arbitrator s fair settlements and to make bids in an infinite strategy space that maximize their expected payoffs necessary and sufficient conditions for there to be local and global equilibria in pure strategies are derived and necessary conditions for mixed strategies in a particular case are found such equilibria when they exist in pure strategies represent bids which are symmetric about the median and for most common distributions are separated from one another by two or more standard deviations this finding suggests that final offer arbitration may not accomplish its avowed purpose of inducing the two parties to converge on what they perceive to be t

financial crisis in southeast asia dispelling illusion the minskyan way this paper extends minsky s financial instability hypothesis to the case of the open liberalised economy making it possible to put forward a specifically minskyan account of the road to the financial crisis in southeast asia 1997 1998 the analysis suggests that the threats to growth and employment emanating from the financial sector which minsky identified in the closed economy setting are much intensified in open liberalised developing economies financial liberalisation is an important key factor in this process rival explanations of the crisis are examined and rejected in favour of the extended minskyan explanation the policy implications are derived and discussed copyright 2002 oxford university press

electoral rules strategic entry and polarization abstract how does electoral rule disproportionality affect the structure of the party system i e the number and the policy platforms of the competing parties by studying a model where both party entry and platform choice are endogenous we are able to provide a unified theory an increasing electoral rule disproportionality exhibits a a first order negative effect on platform polarization b a second order negative effect on the number of parties as polarization decreases centrist parties are squeezed between other contenders and prefer not to enter and c an additional third order negative effect on polarization via the reduction of the number of parties we then conduct a laboratory experiment and strongly confirm the theoretical predictions of the model

a model of candidate location when one candidate has a valence advantage that under some fairly weak assumptions for all levels of the valence advantage the advantaged candidate chooses a more moderate position than the disadvantaged candidate empirical studies of congressional elections by fiorina 1973 and ansolabehere snyder and stewart 2001 support this result d owns 1957 seminal work presents a puzzle for scholars of u s elections why do candidates not converge to the median voter one of the best explanations is that the candidates themselves have ideological preferences as calvert 1985 and wittman 1977 1983 have shown when candidates have such preferences and they are sufficiently uncertain about the preferences of the median voter then they do not converge although they may moderate their positions from their ideal point the basic version of the calvert wittman model however does not account for another basic fact of u s elections often one of the candidates has an advantage due to a nonpolicy factor such as incumbency greater campaign funds better name recognition superior charisma superior intelligence and so on stokes has dubbed such factors valence factors and he has noted their importance in u s elections stokes 1963 1992 1 in this article i extend the basic calvert wittman model by giving one candidate a valence advantage over the other i show that if the valence characteristics of the candidates are approximately equal then when a candidate s valence advantage increases this causes her to move toward the

developing countries changing nature of financial integration and new forms of external vulnerability the brazilian experience this article argues using the example of brazil that the changing nature of developing and emerging countries decs financial integration has created new forms of external vulnerability causing large and volatile capital and exchange rate movements despite sound fundamentals and a substantial reduction in its traditional external vulnerabilities the brazilian real has been one of the most volatile currencies over recent years the article argues that this has been the result of the surging exposure of foreign investors in an increasingly complex set of very short term domestic currency assets following a minskyan analysis we demonstrate that the changing nature of brazil s external vulnerability confirms both the inherent and endogenous instability of international capital flows and decs subordinate role in the international financial system we conclude with policy recommendations to reduce decs external vulnerability sustainably

book reniewstabilizing an unstable economy hyman p minsky a twentieth century fund report yale university press new haven and london pp xiv 353 35 00 cloth 14 95 paper

policy divergence in multicandidate probabilistic spatial voting existing models of multicandidate spatial competition with probabilistic voting typically predict a high degree of policy convergence yet in actual elections candidates advocate quite divergent sets of policies what accounts for this disparity between theory and empirical observation i introduce two variations on the basic probabilistic vote model which may account for candidate policy divergence 1 a model which incorporates candidate specific variables so that candidates may enjoy nonpolicy related electoral advantages or disadvantages 2 a model which allows nonzero correlations between the random terms associated with voters candidate utilities thereby capturing situations where voters view two or more candidates as similar on nonpolicy grounds i report candidate equilibrium analyses for each model which show far greater policy divergence than exists under the standard probabilistic vote model i then analyze the strategic logic which underlies these results

heightening comparativists concern for model choice voting behavior in great britain and the netherlands as the research methodology more closely approximates the causal process being analyzed the inferences and predictions derived from that methodology will better represent actual behavior statistical models were specified on the basis of accepted theories of voting behavior and political cleavages in the netherlands and great britain we hypothesize that multinomial models provide a more accurate characterization of voting behavior in countries with more than two political parties competing for votes binomial logit multinomial logit and nested multinomial logit models of voting behavior are estimated on dutch and british national election study data compared to binomial methods we find that multinomial models of voting behavior produce results that are more congruent with accepted theories of dutch and british politics

electoral rule disproportionality and platform polarization despite common perception existing theoretical literature lacks a complete for mal argument regarding the relationship between the electoral rule disproportionality and platform polarization in this paper we build a model that incorporates the disproportionality of the electoral system in a standard downsian electoral competition setup with mainly but not necessarily purely policy motivated parties we first show that in equilibrium platform polarization is decreasing in the level of the electoral rule disproportionality we then argue that the number of parties has a positive effect on platform polarization when polarization is measured by the distance between the two most distant platforms this effect does not hold when polarization is measured by the widely used dalton index constructing a dataset covering more than 300 elections our main theoretical findings are empirically supported pointing towards the electoral rule disproportionality as a major determinant of polarization

an empirical analysis of household energy choice in ghana abstract using data from two recently available living standards surveys we trace the dynamics in cooking fuel choice among ghanaian households over the period 2005 6 and 2012 13 and further investigate the main forces driving households choice of a cooking fuel evidence from this paper reveals a significant transition from fuelwood use towards lpg over the period results further reveal factors such as price reliability in supply of lpg income and other household attributes as significant factors influencing households choice of a given energy type for cooking relevant policy prescriptions are offered to engender sustainable energy use and reduce over reliance on the already depleted forest resources for biomass energy

how stable is the value basis for organic food consumption in china abstract the objective this paper is to investigate whether a solid and stable value base exists in china for buying organic food and which values that might be we study the stability of the value basis for buying organic food in china by means of two surveys with ordinary chinese consumers collected in 2009 n 529 and 2012 n 478 outside supermarkets selling organic food in guangzhou china consistent with previous studies in western countries we find that the attitude towards buying organic vegetables is related to the value type schwarz terms universalism and when universalism is controlled no other values increase explained variance the value attitude and the attitude behavior relationships for organic vegetables are significant at both times and are not significantly different between the two time points however contrary to what we expected the studied behavior purchase of organic vegetables is significantly related to basic values only in 2009 but unrelated in 2012 we discuss the implications of these findings for the development of a sustainable consumption pattern in china and specifically for consumers adopting green solutions invented in the west sometimes referred to as green leap frogging

is the accumulation of international reserves good for development international reserves accumulation has been the preferred policy recently adopted by developing economies to achieve financial stability the aim of this policy is to increase liquidity and thus reduce the risk of suffering a speculative attack the main concern expressed in the literature has been related to its cost most of the studies conclude that the opportunity cost of international reserves accumulation is around 1 of gdp however these studies have not analysed whether this strategy is or could be more broadly supportive of development an issue that must be of central interest for developing economies the aim of this paper is to show that the stockpiling of international reserves is not optimal for developmental purposes and that there exist alternative policies that can be applied to achieve financial stability policy autonomy and a better performance in terms of development

the influence of personal values on fair trade consumption abstract few studies investigate the motives underlying the consumption of fair trade ft products although the movement has grown substantially in the last decade this study examines the influence of personal values on ft consumption using data collected from 268 canadian consumers using an adapted version of the rockeach list of values three classes of values are identified self directed equality and social justice and power and social status using structural equation modeling the study shows a positive and significant effect of equality and social justice values on ft consumption a negative and significant effect of power and social status values on ft consumption and no significant effect of self directed values on ft consumption

the mean voter theorem necessary and sufficient conditions for convergent equilibrium formal models of elections have emphasized the convergence of party leaders towards the centre of the electoral distribution this paper attempts to resolve the apparent disparity between the formal result and the perception of political divergence by considering a model incorporating valence valence can be interpreted as the non policy basis of political judgement made by the electorate concerning the quality of political contenders the theorem presented here shows that there is a necessary condition for convergence the condition involves the difference in party valences and the electoral variance when the condition fails the low valence parties will be forced to adopt policy positions far from the electoral centre the inference appears to be substantiated by an empirical model of the israel election in 1996 copyright 2007 wiley blackwell

do fair trade and eco labels in coffee wake up the consumer conscience abstract in this study a face to face survey was conducted in order to reveal consumer preferences for ethical and environmentally sound labeling programs in coffee valuation questions regarding the fair trade shade grown and organic coffee labels were asked using a payment card format after consumers were previously informed about each of the labeling programs results suggest that consumers are very receptive toward both fair trade and shade grown coffee labels and consequently are willing to pay higher premiums for these labeling programs than for the organic coffee

a cross national investigation on how ethical consumers build loyalty toward fair trade brands although fair trade has recently experienced rapid growth around the world there is lack of consumer research that investigates what determines consumers loyalty toward fair trade brands in this research we investigate how ethical consumption values ecv and two mediating variables fair trade product beliefs ftpb and fair trade corporate evaluation ftce determine fair trade brand loyalty ftbl on the basis of two empirical studies that use samples from the u s and korea we provide evidence demonstrating that the manner in which ecv influence ftbl differs in the u s and korea in the u s ecv determine ftbl only indirectly via ftpb whereas in korea they determine ftbl directly as well as indirectly via ftce we discuss theoretical and managerial implications of these findings

do consumers care about ethical luxury this article explores the extent to which consumers consider ethics in luxury goods consumption in particular it explores whether there is a significant difference between consumers propensity to consider ethics in luxury versus commodity purchase and whether consumers are ready to purchase ethical luxury prior research in ethical consumption focuses on low value commoditized product categories such as food cosmetics and high street apparel it is debatable if consumers follow similar ethical consumption patterns in luxury purchases findings indicate that consumers propensity to consider ethics is significantly lower in luxury purchases when compared to commoditized purchases and explores some of the potential reasons for this reduced propensity to identify or act upon ethical issues in luxury consumption

the role of personal values in fair trade consumption research in the u s on fair trade consumption is sparse therefore little is known as to what motivates u s consumers to buy fair trade products this study sought to determine which values are salient to american fair trade consumption the data were gathered via a web based version of the schwartz value survey svs and were gleaned from actual consumers who purchase fair trade products from a range of internet based fair trade retailers this study established that indeed there are significant interactions between personal values and fair trade consumption and that demographics proved to be useless in creating a profile of the american fair trade consumer

fairtrade towns as unconventional networks of ethical activism the growing availability and consumption of fairtrade products is recognised as one of the most widespread ethically inspired market developments and as an example of activist driven change within the wider marketing system the fairtrade towns movement now operating in over 1700 towns and cities globally represents a comparatively recent extension of fairtrade marketing driven by local activists seeking to promote positive change in production and consumption systems this paper briefly explores the conventional framing of the role that ethically related activism plays in the operation of markets and in influencing market participants it then presents key insights gathered from a grounded theory exploration of fairtrade towns as activist driven marketing systems revealing the atypical nature of the activism involved the findings demonstrate how local activists leverage their social networks to exert pressure and generate support to promote ethical consumption the study suggests that fairtrade towns offer a new role for activists as fairtrade itself becomes more mainstream and considers the role they are fulfilling as informal local marketers the marketing dynamics revealed represent a complex and distinctive form of relational activism that seeks to build fairtrade markets and highlight their positive benefits with potential lessons for other local ethical market building efforts in future

ethical consumption in brazil and chile institutional contexts and development trajectories this paper presents the first findings of an ongoing multi national research project between universities in brazil chile and the uk funded by the uk economic and social science research council esrc and the department for international development dfid the choices project seeks to analyse contextual understandings and practices of ethical consumption in chile and brazil in a further step it explores how ethical consumption and public procurement can be associated and used to foster sustainable development the paper presents the outcomes of the first stage of the project an extensive literature review considering the developing trends towards ethical sustainable responsible and conscious consumption in both countries chile and brazil are former developing countries and although they both now have growing ethical consumption movements we argue that these are shaped by the specificities of each country s political economic and institutional trajectories in one case chile ethical consumption has arisen from market forces with lead actors being companies consultancies and citizen and consumer organizations brazil on the other hand provides also a very interesting case for studying how ethical consumption is embedded in another latin american context it has a larger state sector and a domestic market size to give the state and thus the consecutive centre left governments great regulatory power since it can control firms access to this market both cases showed the increasing role of corporate social responsibility discourses and practices interfacing with concepts of ethical consumption as a consequence the paper identifies a risk of firstly greenwash and whitewash by large companies and secondly of having small producers struggling to market their products

who wins determining the party of the prime minister the prime ministership is the preeminent political post in parliamentary democracies yet few studies examine pm party choice perhaps under the assumption that the choice is a simple function of party size in this article we argue that key strategic actors and the context in which government negotiations take place can play a critical role in pm party choice we test our hypotheses using a mixed logit with random coefficients on an original data set comprising pm selection opportunities in 28 european countries our methodological approach allows us to incorporate qualitative concerns about heterogeneity and causal complexity into our analysis contrary to conventional wisdom we find that the largest party is often disadvantaged when it comes to pm party choice that some presidents play an influential role in choosing the pm and that the value of being the incumbent depends on one s performance in office and how the previous government ended

the effects of alternative power sharing arrangements do moderating institutions moderate party strategies and government policy outputs advocates of consensual political institutions i e institutions that promote compromise and powersharing among political parties claim that these institutions promote moderation in government policy outputs to date however there exists little research either theoretical or empirical that evaluates whether consensual institutions promote moderation in parties policy declarations we develop a multiparty spatial model with policy seeking parties operating under proportional representation in which we vary the extent to which government policies reflect power sharing among all parties as opposed to being determined by a single party we determine parties optimal nash equilibrium policy positions and conclude that power sharing does not typically motivate parties to moderate their policy declarations in fact policy positioning under power sharing appears to be similar to or more extreme than under single party dominance consistent with previous research however we find that power sharing does promote moderation in government policy outputs our results have implications for parties election strategies for the design of political institutions and for representative government

vote trading in power sharing systems a laboratory investigation in theory decentralized vote trading in power sharing systems promotes a efficiency by assigning greater decision making power to individuals that care a lot about the election s outcome and b dispersion of benefits since even individuals that have little interest about the electoral result can profit by selling their votes we experimentally test these intuitions in the laboratory and find that indeed allowing real subjects to trade votes for money in such systems increases collective welfare and substantially redistributes it towards those that are less concerned about the election importantly these findings hold true under alternative trading institutions thus reinforcing their empirical relevance

don t stand so close to me spatial contagion effects and party competition in this article we bring together elements from the literatures on economic voting and spatial voting to gain theoretical leverage on the combined role of clarity of responsibility party policy positions and economic performance in elections building on evidence of voter knowledge we develop a theory of spatial contagion effects to explain how factors drawn from both of these literatures combine to shape changes in support for political parties we test this theory with a spatial autoregressive model of party competition in 23 nations from 1951 to 2005 as expected we find evidence of strong spatial contagion effects in elections with low clarity of responsibility

towards a framework for understanding fairtrade purchase intention in the mainstream environment of supermarkets despite growing interest in ethical consumer behaviour research ambiguity remains regarding what motivates consumers to purchase ethical products while researchers largely attribute the growth of ethical consumerism to an increase in ethical consumer concerns and motivations widened distribution mainstreaming of ethical products such as fairtrade questions these assumptions a model that integrates both individual and societal values into the theory of planned behaviour is presented and empirically tested to challenge the assumption that ethical consumption is driven by ethical considerations alone using data sourced from fairtrade shoppers across the uk structural equation modelling suggests that fairtrade purchase intention is driven by both societal and self interest values this dual value pathway helps address conceptual limitations inherent in the underlying assumptions of existing ethical purchasing behaviour models and helps advance understanding of consumers motivation to purchase ethical products

faith and fair trade the moderating role of contextual religious salience normative and historical arguments support the idea that religion potentially shapes decisions to support fair trade products that said the question of how religion influences organizational decision makers to purchase fair trade products in a business to business context has remained largely unaddressed this research examines the interactive effect of individual religious commitment and contextual religious salience on an individual s willingness to pay a price premium for a fair trade product when buying on behalf of an organization findings from two experimental studies involving 75 and 87 working individuals respectively reveal that the effect of a decision maker s religious commitment on his or her willingness to pay a price premium for the purchase of a fair trade product on behalf of an organization is moderated by the contextual salience of religion specifically when religion is highly salient in the organizational context religious commitment is positively related to the decision maker s willingness to pay a premium for the fair trade product when contextual religious salience is low religious commitment and willingness to pay a premium are unrelated implications for theory and practice are presented

a theory of voting in large elections this paper provides a game theoretic model of probabilistic voting and then examines the incentives faced by candidates in a spatial model of elections in our model voters strategies form a quantal response equilibrium qre which merges strategic voting and probabilistic behavior we first show that a qre in the voting game exists for all elections with a finite number of candidates and then proceed to show that with enough voters and the addition of a regularity condition on voters utilities a nash equilibrium profile of platforms exists when candidates seek to maximize their expected margin of victory this equilibrium 1 consists of all candidates converging to the policy that maximizes the expected sum of voters utilities 2 exists even when voters can abstain and 3 is unique when there are only 2 candidates