the ambivalent impact of coffee certification on farmers welfare a matched panel approach for cooperatives in central kenya certification is promoted to improve rural welfare through better market access and improved agricultural practices we compare net effects of fairtrade and utz certified coffee production in central kenya using a matched panel from 218 farm households that belong to three cooperatives and were visited twice in 2009 and 2013 we distinguish between effects at field farm household cooperative community and market levels both certification regimes improved coffee returns but fairtrade was more effective in coffee processing whereas utz contributed to productivity under stagnating coffee prices fairtrade farmers increased their coffee specialization while utz farmers reduced coffee areas but increased yield

the development of a market for sustainable coffee in the netherlands rethinking the contribution of fair trade in recent years researchers have observed the process of mainstreaming fair trade and the emergence of alternative sustainability standards in the coffee industry the underlying market dynamics that have contributed to these developments are however under researched insight into these dynamics is important to understand how markets can develop to favor sustainability this study examines the major developments in the market for certified coffee in the netherlands it finds that in the creation of a market for sustainable coffee decisions that significantly influence market creation are made in the lead companies retailers and coffee roasters these decisions are made possible by the availability of multiple systems of sustainability standards and by the existence of a small segment of loyal fair trade customers that ensured that sustainability remained an issue on the coffee market in the years before the market creation took off fair trade did not become the new rule in this process but it became the benchmark against which companies could compare themselves and the basis upon which they built in adopting or developing new standards that would be more feasible in their business models

fair trade and the depersonalization of ethics fair trade has changed considerably since its early days in this article we argue that these changes have led to a depersonalization of ethics thus raising serious questions about the future of fair trade in particular the depersonalization of ethics which is seen to accompany the current changes has led to greater variety in the interpretations of fair trade hiding these divergences behind the labels is increasing the risk that the movement will lose its credibility

artisanal gold and transformational exchange toward a public private partnership in tanzania abstract human rights abuses environmental predations and governance failures plague artisanal gold mining in tanzania gold s exchange value and the illegality of most artisanal gold product challenge the traditional fair trade model a potential solution additionally memories of the government s earlier failed effort to serve as a sole purchaser of artisanal gold undercut enthusiasm for statist interventions this paper presents an alternative a public private partnership ppp that would engage one or more private banks an agency within the ministry of energy and minerals and ngos or international initiatives specifically aimed at improving conditions for artisanal mine operators the concept of transformational exchange wherein a set of business transactions substantially affects societal expectations modifies behavior and promotes sustainable mechanisms frames the proposal

course requirements for bachelor s degrees in economics we conducted a national survey of department chairs to investigate whether departments of economics changed course requirements for bachelors degrees since the siegfried and bidani 1992 paper using 1980 data there have been few changes to course requirements most notable are a large increase in the number of departments requiring econometrics and a drop in departments requiring courses such as money banking and economic history courses once required in many business schools

fair trade standards corporate participation and social movement responses in the united states this article examines the development of and contestation over the standards for certified fair trade with particular attention to the u s context it charts fair trade s rapid growth in the united states since the 1999 advent of formal certification explores the controversies generated by the strategy of market mainstreaming in the sector and focuses on five key issues that have generated particularly heated contention within the u s fair trade movement it offers a theoretical framework based in the literatures on agrifood systems social movements and public choice economics for understanding the corporate response to alternative markets such as fair trade the article suggests a typology of responses by social movement actors to this increased corporate participation and assesses the relevance of the u s case for the future prospects of fair trade both in other national contexts and as an international movement

a review of efforts to restructure texas electricity market abstract comparisons suggest that texas has been relatively successful in its efforts to introduce greater competition and customer choice into its unique electricity market center for advancement of electricity markets 2002 yet texas has defied many of the common prescriptions in designing its market texas has yet to establish a nodal congestion management system that directly assigns local congestion costs to entities responsible for creating transmission congestion a liquid power exchange or spot market is absent programs designed to encourage demand side responsiveness had a slow start market concentration remains high market oversight activities are poorly funded a generation adequacy mechanism or planning reserve margin requirement remains under debate has texas simply been lucky in averting any real disasters or are these market features less important than commonly recognized this article reviews the restructuring initiative and reports some key lessons learned following the first twenty months under the new wholesale market structure and fifteen months of retail competition

the globalization of organic agro food networks summary this article analyzes the booming world trade in organic agro foods such as tropical products counterseasonal fresh produce and processed foods research focuses on expanding south north networks linking major us and european markets with major production regions particularly in latin america employing a commodity network approach i analyze organic production distribution and consumption patterns and the roles of social political and economic actors in consolidating international trade organic certification proves central to network governance shaping product specifications production parameters and enterprise participation my analysis identifies key contradictions between mainstream agro industrial and alternative movement conventions in global organic networks 2004 published by elsevier ltd

tracking the quality premium of certified coffee evidence from ethiopia summary certification of voluntary sustainability standards vss is rapidly increasing in global value chains while consumers mostly in developed countries are willing to pay significant premiums for the certification of such standards it is not well understood how effectively these incentives are transmitted to producing countries we study vss more in particular fair trade and organic certification in ethiopia s coffee sector the country s most important export commodity using a unique census of transaction data at the export level and large scale data at the production level we find that transmission of export quality premiums to coffee producers is limited with only less than one third of this premium being passed on and we find limited evidence of effects due to communal investments moreover as quality premiums are small and average production levels in these settings are low we estimate that these premiums would only lead to an increased income for coffee farmers of 22 usd per year even with a perfect transmission scenario and therefore would have little impact on the welfare of the average coffee farmer given that the vss studied are characterized by the highest premiums among vss schemes it can be assumed that even lower benefits from other vss certification schemes trickle down to producers

small farmer cooperatives and voluntary coffee certifications rewarding progressive farmers of engendering widespread change in costa rica abstract our research examines the benefits and drawbacks for cooperatives who participate in voluntary coffee certifications we interviewed administrators at twenty costa rican coffee cooperatives about management practices related to voluntary certification voluntary certifications are popular among coffee cooperatives access to certified markets is facilitated by state support of the cooperative sector regulation of the coffee sector and well enforced environmental and social laws however there are no significant or consistent financial incentives for farmers to pursue certification multiple certifications may lower auditing and implementation costs but cooperatives rarely receive the full premium for multiply certified coffee low market demand for certified coffee weak price incentives and high auditing and management costs encourage cooperatives to certify only a portion of their members this strategy rewards compliant farmers rather than inducing widespread change to farming practices among the entire membership though financial incentives are weak certifications offer non financial benefits to both farmers and cooperatives including better management and more resilient cooperatives

corporate leadership multilevel enforcement and biodiversity regulation globalization incentives the rise of non state actors in unprecedented ways along with the creation of transnational arenas which are neither international intergovernmental nor national domestic but transborder political processes where firms non governmental organizations ngos states and social communities set up rules and provide governance mechanisms to enforce those at local level the article is anchored in the idea that public private governance matters where the primary driver is the market incentive we test the hypotheses that public private cooperation at local level is based on shared knowledge and expertise among firms civil society and state authority dealing with a natural resource which comes from the brazilian biodiversity ngos and companies have developed the ability to act as enforcers as they interpret the public international national regulation and develop an expertise through best practices that are applied to enforce biodiversity regulation at the local level through a multilevel system that operates transnationally

government interventions in sustainable supply chain governance experience in dutch front running cases numerous multi actor governance systems have recently emerged ensuring sustainability of international traded products business and civil society actors play a dominant role in initiating and governing sustainable supply chain governance systems sscg systems within specific product markets we see the emergence of various competing sscg systems this has led to debates on effectiveness transparency and legitimacy of these forms of self governance in the market these developments also call for a debate on appropriate roles for national governments most of the academic literature in this field focuses on methodologies for supply chain governance and their impacts but hardly addresses the roles taken on by governments and effectiveness of possible government interventions this article combines analysis of market dynamics in the timber and coffee product chains with policy analysis integrating approaches from the research fields of sustainable business and policy analysis the article shows how competition between various sustainable supply chain governance systems in the netherlands has resulted in recent market breakthroughs while initially government interventions were very limited and diverse the article suggests an approach for more systematic analysis of these dynamics and the roles of various actors by identifying both the public policy cycle and the private policy cycle

decoupling standards from practice the impact of in house certifications on coffee farms environmental and social conduct in this paper we investigate whether coffee farms that have been granted in house socio environmental certification from a global buyer display better social and environmental conduct compared to non certified farms we perform an econometric analysis using data from an original cross country survey covering 575 farms in various regions of brazil colombia costa rica guatemala and mexico we find that farms that have been granted in house certification demonstrate better environmental but not better social conduct than non certified farms we find also that the positive relationship between in house certification and environmental conduct is stronger if the farm sells to a cooperative and if it is located in an institutionally weak country finally we find that the institutional strength of the farm s home country has a positive influence on its social conduct we discuss how our analysis contributes to the literature on the social and environmental impacts of certifications and to scholarship in global value chains social and environmental upgrading

the latte revolution regulation markets and consumption in the global coffee chain abstract coffee is a truly global commodity and a major foreign exchange earner in many developing countries the global coffee chain has changed dramatically as a result of deregulation new consumption patterns and evolving corporate strategies from a balanced contest between producing and consuming countries within the politics of international coffee agreements power relations shifted to the advantage of transnational corporations a relatively stable institutional environment where proportions of generated income were fairly distributed between producing and consuming countries turned into one that is more informal unstable and unequal through the lenses of global commodity chain analysis this paper examines how these transformations affect developing countries and what policy instruments are available to address the emerging imbalances

fair trade organic coffee rural livelihoods and the agrarian question southern mexican coffee families in transition summary we use a random sample of coffee producing households in southern mexico to compare opportunities associated with government subsidies and migration to the role of fair trade organic coffee in household livelihoods although land and labor returns among fair trade organic coffee growers are higher than for conventional growers differences in yields are more important than price premiums moreover investment in education and labor opportunities outside coffee dominate those in fair trade organic coffee the results highlight the value of an integrated approach to the agrarian question that improves productivity and prices and supports other pathways for improving incomes

assessing the impact of fair trade coffee towards an integrative framework this article presents an impact assessment framework that allows for the evaluation of positive and negative local level impacts that have resulted from responsible trade interventions such as fair trade and ethical trade the framework investigates impact relating to 1 livelihood impacts on primary stakeholders 2 socio economic impacts on communities 3 organizational impacts 4 environmental impacts 5 policies and institutional impacts and 6 future prospects it identifies relevant local level stakeholders and facilitates the analysis of conflicting interests the framework was developed in the context of and is applied in this article to the fair trade coffee industry in northern nicaragua it was designed however so that it can be applied across commodity sectors and responsible trade initiatives it is able to do this by accommodating for differences in the social environmental political and institutional contexts of different areas and by taking into account the distinct nature of an initiative s overall objectives different levels of intervention and the full range of stakeholders involved

the effect of specialty coffee certification on household livelihood strategies and specialisation abstract farm certification is rapidly becoming a sine qua non for access to specialty coffee markets at the centre of these changes are smallholder coffee producers responsible for 80 of global coffee production although rural households are known to depend on more than agricultural production alone the literature on specialty coffee and certification has rather narrowly focused on coffee income and production in this study broader impacts are explicitly taken into account household income was decomposed into categories corresponding to specific income generating activities and coffee income was broken down into price yield and area effects results show that coffee certification encourages farmers to specialise in coffee production increasing coffee income but not total household income at least not in the short run the time and effort required to attain the higher coffee income offered by certified production means farmers have to give up other activities this substitution effect cancels out the income effect such that there is no increase in total household income the lack of an effect on total household income suggests the return to the additional labour effort required for certified coffee production is not higher than in other activities questioning the benefits of certification for small scale producers

assessing and managing regulatory risk in renewable energy contrasts between canada and the united states abstact a challenge for energy firms when considering new investments is to balance expected financial gains against potential risks however while investment opportunities in different jurisdictions are often straightforward to identify the policy or regulatory risks for investors are more difficult to accurately ascertain here i provide a novel conceptual framework for how firms can assess regulatory risk that focuses on the institutional processes governing policy making risks are lower and policies will subsequently be more stable in jurisdictions where regulatory agencies have greater autonomy from politicians and where policies are formulated through more rigid policy making processes the contrasting development patterns of renewable energy policies in ontario and texas offer support for the framework i further develop strategies for how firms can successfully manage regulatory risks in different types of environment

did residential electricity rates fall after retail competition a dynamic panel analysis abstract a key selling point for the restructuring of electricity markets was the promise of lower prices there is not much consensus in earlier studies on the effects of electricity deregulation in the u s particularly for residential customers part of the reason for not finding a consistent link with deregulation and lower prices was that the removal of transitional price caps led to higher prices in addition the timing of the removal of price caps coincided with rising fuel prices which were passed on to consumers in a competitive market using a dynamic panel model we analyze the effect of participation rates fuel costs market size a rate cap and switch to competition for 16 states and the district of columbia we find that an increase in participation rates price controls a larger market and high shares of hydro in electricity generation lower retail prices while increases in natural gas and coal prices increase rates we also find that retail competition makes the market more efficient by lowering the markup of retail prices over wholesale costs the effects of a competitive retail electricity market are mixed across states but generally appear to lower prices in states with high participation rates

effects of fair trade certification on social capital the case of rwandan coffee producers summary fair trade certification may have important social effects on small scale producers but empirical evidence is limited we conducted logistic regressions using data from a 2009 survey of rwandan coffee farmers to estimate the link between fair trade and social capital measured as farmer trust and participation while controlling for various other factors that could influence social capital particularly membership in a cooperative organization the results show a negative association between fair trade and farmer trust in cooperative leadership and a positive association with a perceived higher level of participation of women social capital is linked most significantly to farmers interaction with their neighbors

governance and trade in fresh vegetables the impact of uk supermarkets on the african horticulture industry production of fresh vegetables for export has grown rapidly in a number of countries in sub saharan africa over the last decade this trade brings producers and exporters based in africa together with importers and retailers in europe large retailers in europe play a decisive role in structuring the production and processing of fresh vegetables exported from africa the requirements they specify for cost quality delivery product variety innovation food safety and quality systems help top determine what types of producers and processors are able to gain access to the fresh vegetables chain and the activities they must carry out the control over the fresh vegetables trade exercised by uk supermarkets has clear consequences for inclusion and exclusion of producers and exporters of differing types and for the long term prospects for the fresh vegetables industry in the two major exporting countries studied kenya and zimbabwe

has electric utility restructuring led to lower electricity prices for residential consumers in texas this paper analyzes the determination of residential electricity prices in the competitive electric reliability council of texas ercot market this analysis suggests that electricity restructuring in texas has not yet resulted in lower prices for the majority of residential energy consumers in areas open to competition contrary to common expectations residential electricity costs for consumers at a typical 1000 kwh per month consumption level have increased at a greater rate in the areas of texas offering retail choice than in the areas of the state where retail competition has not been introduced

what knowledge is most worth knowing for economics majors asks it in a new context the old question is a paraphrase of the title of herbert spencer s famous essay what knowledge is of most worth the new context is to pose the question for undergraduate students majoring in economics my intent is to engage you in reflecting about what kinds of knowledge and skills our economics majors should master what proficiencies they should be able to demonstrate by the time they graduate from college my focus is on not the select few who plan to enter graduate economics programs but rather the vast majority who go out into the world and will become the next generation of leaders i propose a list of knowledge and skills perhaps a better word is proficiencies that we might reasonably expect our majors to demonstrate upon graduation this is by no means a final or definitive list rather it is offered to stimulate discussion about the meaning of the economics major and how to give it more meaning

mainstreaming and its discontents fair trade socially responsible investing and industry trajectories over time according to popular and academic accounts alternative trade initiatives such as fair trade organics forest certification and socially responsible investing sri almost invariably lose their oppositional stance and go mainstream that is they lose their alternative usually peripheral and often contrarian character in this paper i argue that this is not always the case and that the path to going mainstream is not always an unproblematic one i observe that while scholars have documented various aspects of specific alternative trade initiatives little comparative work has been done to theorize their different trajectories to advance the scholarship i compare two alternative trade movements fair trade and sri and develop three hypotheses the relation motivations hypothesis the material interests hypothesis and the organization of credibility hypothesis that explain why going mainstream has been so hotly contested in the fair trade movement but not the sri movement i articulate these hypotheses and evaluate their merits

disentangling the effects of fair trade on the quality of malian cotton the increasing importance of premium segments and private labels raise skepticism about the ability of fair trade to help smallholders compete in high value added markets using panel data collected in mali this paper contributes to the debate by estimating the impact of fairtrade certification on the quality of malian cotton controlling for the nonrandom certification of producers results show a significant impact on the quality of cotton produced by both certified and geographically close noncertified growers via spillover effects the analysis suggests that contract farming enforced by third parties and demonstration effects foster the adoption of innovative agricultural practices

mainstreaming fair trade coffee from partnership to traceability summary this article analyzes the recent growth of fair trade and the mainstreaming of this previously alternative arena focusing on coffee i identify a continuum of buyers ranging from mission driven enterprises that uphold alternative ideas and practices based on social ecological and place based commitments to quality driven firms that selectively foster fair trade conventions to ensure reliable supplies of excellent coffee to market driven corporations that largely pursue commercial industrial conventions rooted in price competition and product regulation using a commodity network approach my analysis illuminates the impacts of diverse buyer relations on producer groups and how relations are in some cases shifting from partnership to traceability

did the expiration of retail price caps affect prices in the restructured texas electricity market on january 1 2007 the electric reliability council of texas ercot market became the first restructured market in the us to completely remove caps on the prices which could be charged to residential energy consumers by the retailers associated with the traditional or incumbent utility service providers our analysis suggests that the expiration of the price to beat ptb price caps may have led to a reduction in the average prices charged by competitive retail electric providers reps

ethical objections to fairtrade the fairtrade movement is a group of businesses claiming to trade ethically the claims are evaluated under a range of criteria derived from the utilitarian ethic firstly if aid or charity money is diverted from the very poorest people to the quite poor or the rich there is an increase in death and destitution it is shown that little of the extra paid by consumers for fairtrade reaches farmers sometimes none it cannot be shown that it has a positive impact on fairtrade farmers in general but evidence suggesting it harms others is presented many of the weaknesses are due to an attempt to impose political views on farmers and others secondly the unfair trading criteria require that sellers do not lie about their product nor withhold information that might alter the decisions of a substantial proportion of buyers it is argued that the system only can exist because of the failure of the fairtrade industry to give the facts on what happens to the money and what it can be proved it achieves this unfair trading compromises the reputation of charities in general much of the trading may constitute the criminal offence of unfair trading in the eu

transforming or reproducing conventional socioeconomic relations introducing a regulationist framework for the assessment of fairtrade summary the certification based fair trade initiative is usually described as an alternative form of organizing production trade and consumption with the goal of advancing the situation of marginalized producers and workers while much of the fair trade literature has analyzed the system s direct impacts on its beneficiaries some strands have sought to determine its transformative potential vis a vis capitalist social relations in an attempt to contribute to the latter debate this paper introduces an analytical framework for the assessment of fairtrade built on the basis of the french regulation approach this perspective which focuses on the specific ways in which fairtrade structures and institutionalizes socioeconomic relations seeks to examine this system from a holistic perspective privileging the analysis of the qualitative changes it produces in economic institutions and structures this article presents the main assumptions and concepts developed by the regulation approach and proposes a case based research design that uses them to analyze how transformative fairtrade proves to be and the impacts it produces on specific economic sectors this methodological exposition is illustrated with examples from the case of fairtrade wine produced in argentina and consumed in the united kingdom

engel curves for fair trade consumption and development perspectives for producers evidence from data on real fairtrade purchases while fairtrade sales have exhibited two digit growth rates over recent decades their capacity to become large enough to generate substantial gains for producers is still uncertain estimating fai

sustaining inter organizational relationships across institutional logics and power asymmetries the case of fair trade this paper explores an empirical puzzle namely how inter organizational relationships can be sustained between organizations that draw upon distinctive and potentially conflicting institutional logics under conditions of power asymmetry this research analyses cases of these relationships and suggests some key conditions underlying them examining relationships between fair trade organizations and corporate retailers a series of contingent factors behind the dynamic persistence of such relationships are proposed namely the presence of pre existing hybrid logics the use of boundary spanning discourses joint tolerance of conflict and co creation of common rules these four elements are supported by a fifth mediating factor i e the presence and use of a fair trade certification system in the collaboration the latter appears as a central vehicle facilitating cross logic relationships it can be seen as a boundary object embodying a series of narratives and discourses that are open to multiple interpretations corresponding to the dominant institutional logics of each partner organization

are fair trade goods credence goods a new proposal with french illustrations in the literature fair trade ft goods are usually associated with other products differentiated by process attributes such as organic food genetically modified gm food or child labour free clothing all of these products are regarded as credence goods this classification refers to the simplified definition of credence goods which describes product attributes which consumers cannot evaluate even after having consumed the good focusing on the characteristics of ft goods this article proposes a reassessment of the link between ft goods and credence properties as defined by darby and karni we first demonstrate that 1 the usual classification masks important particularities of ft goods compared to other goods with process attributes and 2 the full definition of credence goods may even provide a better description of the quality of ft goods however and this is our second theoretical contribution the lack of consensus among experts concerning ft standards and their level of efficiency encourage us to consider ft goods as indeterminate goods as defined by lupton this result leads us to suggest a new typology of product attributes summarized in an innovative diagram it sheds light on how competition between the different ft approaches works and why the ft market is still confined to a niche if not threatened with collapse we mainly illustrate our theoretical analysis with observations relating to the french ft market and institutions

mapping research topics and theories in private regulation for sustainability in global value chains the globalization of production and trade has contributed to the rise in complex global value chains where the reach of state regulation is limited as an alternative private regulation developed and administered by companies industry associations and nongovernmental organizations has emerged to safeguard economic environmental and social sustainability in producer countries and along the value chain the academic literature on private regulation in global value chains has grown over the last decade but currently few major reviews of the research have been undertaken this paper examines peer reviewed research in the relevant disciplines published in academic journals up to december 2011 our goal is to identify and classify the topics and theories in the global value chain literature we conclude that the number of articles explicitly examining private regulation in a global value chain context is relatively small when considering the importance and growth of these chains in the world s economy we also conclude that agriculture forestry and apparel manufacturing are the most often studied economic sectors in contrast other sectors such as the information communication and technology with their complex global value chains and often problematic environmental and social conditions are understudied

institutional emergence in an era of globalization the rise of transnational private regulation of labor and environmental conditions1 why have systems of transnational private regulation recently emerged to certify corporate social and environmental performance different conceptions of institutional emergence underlie different answers to this question many scholars argue that firms create certification systems to solve problems in the market a view rooted in a conception of institutions as solutions to collective action problems the author develops a different account by viewing institutions as the outcome of political contestation and by analyzing conflict and institutional entrepreneurship among a wide array of actors using a comparative case study design the analysis shows how these arguments explain the formation of social and environmental certification associations both theoretical approaches are needed but strong versions of the market based approach overlook an important set of dynamics that the author calls the political construction of market institutions the analysis shows how both problem solving in markets and

standards as a new form of social contract sustainability initiatives in the coffee industry abstract in the former age of national capitalism the achievement of market fairness was embedded in a normative framework generated by government labor unions and perhaps religious authority in the current age of global capitalism new actors such as ngos industry associations and public private partnerships provide the normative framework that corporations use for social legitimacy in this context standard setting processes operate as new forms of social contract where the state rather than being directly involved between the parties provides a form of basic guarantee while more or less accountable ngos and firms are in charge of hammering out the bargains this article examines the dynamics of this new configuration through the case study of sustainability initiatives in the coffee sector it addresses four questions 1 are these standards effective in communicating information and creating new markets 2 to what extent do they embed elements of collective and private interests 3 is sustainability content actually delivered to their intended beneficiaries and 4 what is the role of public policy in addressing their shortcomings

retail competition in electricity supply survey results in north carolina residential retail competition in electricity supply was introduced in many countries and some us states as part of electricity industry deregulation following problems in the electricity market in california in 2000 2001 many us states including north carolina suspended their deregulation agenda recent technological advances have made competition more viable so we ask if nc should reconsider deregulation and retail competition the welfare benefits will depend on consumers willingness to switch suppliers and the potential for value added innovations in electricity and industries such as pay tv and telecommunications consumers are sticky remaining with their current supplier even though rivals offer savings moreover some analysts question the likelihood of significant welfare improvements from retail competition we survey residents in two nc counties focusing on i households knowledge of and interest in retail competition ii factors that would encourage them to switch suppliers and iii the required savings to encourage switching about 50 65 of respondents would favor retail competition in nc demographic variables and experience switching in other industries affect opinions and the savings required to incent switching we conclude the estimated rate reduction to encourage competitive switching will be hard to achieve in nc as long as rates remain below the national average

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