crisis or opportunity economic degrowth for social equity and ecological sustainability introduction to this special issue abstract this article reviews the burgeoning emerging literature on sustainable degrowth this is defined as an equitable downscaling of production and consumption that increases human well being and enhances ecological conditions at the local and global level in the short and long term the paradigmatic propositions of degrowth are that economic growth is not sustainable and that human progress without economic growth is possible degrowth proponents come from diverse origins some are critics of market globalization new technologies or the imposition of western models of development in the rest of the world all criticize gdp accounting though they propose often different social and ecological indicators degrowth theorists and practitioners support an extension of human relations instead of market relations demand a deepening of democracy defend ecosystems and propose a more equal distribution of wealth we distinguish between depression i e unplanned degrowth within a growth regime and sustainable degrowth a voluntary smooth and equitable transition to a regime of lower production and consumption the question we ask is how positive would degrowth be if instead of being imposed by an economic crisis it would actually be a democratic collective decision a project with the ambition of getting closer to ecological sustainability and socio environmental justice worldwide most articles in this issue were originally presented at the april 2008 conference in paris on economic degrowth for ecological sustainability and social equity this conference brought the word degrowth and the concepts around it into an international academic setting articles of this special issue are summarized in this introductory article hueting d alessandro and colleagues van den bergh kerschner spangenberg and alcott discuss whether current growth patterns are un sustainable and offer different perspectives on what degrowth might mean and whether and under what conditions it might be desirable matthey and hamilton focus on social dynamics and the obstacles and opportunities for voluntary social action towards degrowth lietaert and cattaneo with gavalda offer a down to earth empirical discussion of two practical living experiments cohousing and squats highlighting the obstacles for scaling up such alternatives finally van griethuysen explains why growth is an imperative in modern market economies raising also the question whether degrowth is possible without radical institutional changes

irreversible investment with regime shifts under the real options approach to investment under uncertainty agents formulate optimal policies under the assumption that firms growth prospects do not vary over time this paper proposes and solves a model of investment decisions in which the growth rate and volatility of the decision variable shift between different states at random times a value maximizing investment policy is derived such that in each regime the firm s investment policy is optimal and recognizes the possibility of a regime shift under this policy investment is intermittent and increases with marginal q moreover investment typically is very small but in some states the capital stock jumps implications for marginal q and the user cost of capital are also examined

strategic buyers and exclusionary contracts this paper characterizes equilibrium exclusionary contracts between buyers an incumbent firm and a potential entrant when buyers can either vertically integrate or contract with the outside entrant in this setting exclusionary contracts are generally shown to be efficient and to deter inefficient entry that would otherwise occur with multiple unorganized buyers equilibrium contracts are shown to take a divide and conquer form and in some cases to deter some efficient entry in such cases efficient contracting can be restored by a policy that prohibits price discrimination and gives agents free reign to sign exclusionary agreements copyright 1994 by american economic association

the competitive effects of vertical agreements for many years there were few distinctions drawn between horizontal and vertical agreements both were considered anticompetitive and subject to per se condemnation under the antitrust laws recently however this approach has come under attack and what was once the conventional wisdom is no longer so indeed there is growing acceptance of the view that vertical agreements can rarely have anticompetitive consequences per se legality would then be the appropriate standard in this paper we investigate the competitive implications of a particular vertical agreement the imposition of exclusive dealing requirements by a manufacturer on his distributors however to maintain the focus of the analysis we do not consider ultimate welfare gains or losses in an early application of economic analysis to this practice aaron director and edward levi 1956 suggest that exclusive dealing would be anticompetitive if it raised entry costs for rivals our object following this conjecture see their p 293 is to examine the market conditions under which exclusive dealing impedes entry howard marvel 1982 dealt with the practice of exclusive dealing he provides an efficiency rationale for exclusive dealing ignores the prospect that anticompetitive effects may follow and concludes that exclusive dealing ought therefore to be treated as legal per se p 25 this paper examines the possible anticompetitive effects neglected by marvel i market conditions for exclusive dealing

environmental regulation technological diversity and the dynamics of technological change inducing technological progress is an important objective of environmental regulation we investigate under which conditions regulation induced technological progress pursues the best technological option we analyze a setting with vertical and horizontal technological progress cost uncertainty time limited patent protection and a case that is typical for some emissi4on intensive industries like electricity generation or the chemical industry under taxes and standards only the current least cost technology is used and developed implying a lock in into a possibly inferior technology tradable permits yield slower progress but can facilitate the simultaneous development of technologies rendering lock ins less likely

degrowth and collaborative value creation reflections on concepts and technologies abstract the concept of degrowth aims fundamentally at reducing material and energy throughput equitably while questioning the desirability of further economic growth in order to achieve this reduction of society s throughput radical changes in the ways goods and services are produced distributed and used are required in this think piece concepts of consumer integration into the value creation process and new enabling technologies are discussed as possible constituting elements of alternative organizational models in a degrowth society to date collaborative value creation concepts such as crowdsourcing and mass customization have been discussed almost exclusively as business model patterns for companies in economies that are set to grow the same applies to the assessment of new technologies such as additive manufacturing web based user interfaces for co creation and other flexible production technologies that allow for collaborative and individualized production potential positive and negative effects of these concepts and technologies with regard to the objectives of degrowth are discussed in order to initiate a debate about the inclusion of cvc for the design of alternative organizational models that are in line with degrowth thinking this think piece illustrates that several elements of collaborative value creation and its enabling technologies coincide with degrowth objectives but do not lead per se to their attainment thereby a starting point for future empirical work in this area is generated

capitalist diversity and de growth trajectories to steady state economies abstract growth critical scholarship has done much to both expose the environmentally unsustainable nature of the capitalist growth economies of the overdeveloped part of the world and to develop an alternative vision of a de growth transition leading to a steady state economy however this scholarship fails to adequately take into consideration that if planned de growth actually materialised it would do so in societies that differ considerably from one another and that this would have implications both for the transition processes and the nature of their outcomes in other words not enough importance is ascribed to capitalist diversity and the nature of institutional change in the growth critical literature against this background the purpose of the present article is to make the concrete utopia of de growth scholars and steady state economists more specific by utilising insights from scholarship on capitalist diversity and institutional change on the basis of a typology of different models of capitalism the article suggests that if de growth transitions took place they would take different forms and lead to a variety of types of steady state economies sses to illustrate this point three ideal typical sses are delineated

income distribution political instability and investment abstract this paper successfully tests on a sample of 71 countries for the period 1960 85 the following hypotheses income inequality by fuelling social discontent increases sociopolitical instability the latter by creating uncertainty in the politico economic environment reduces investment as a consequence income inequality and investment are inversely related since investment is a primary engine of growth this paper identifies a channel for an inverse relationship between income inequality and growth we measure socio political instability with indices which capture the occurrence of more or less violent phenomena of political unrest and we test our hypotheses by estimating a two equation model in which the endogenous variables are investment and an index of socio political instability our results are robust to sensitivity analysis on the specification of the model and the measure of political instability and are unchanged when the model is estimated using robust regression techniques

leaders followers and equity risk premiums in booms and busts abstract we study an investment problem in which two asymmetric firms face competition and the regime characterizing the economic condition follows a markov switching process we derive the value functions and investment thresholds of the leader and follower the option value of regime uncertainty is found to be quite important for the investment decision of firms we also show the relationship between the equity risk premium and the economic cycle that has not been done in previous studies which proxy economic conditions by the level of demand or other state variables

economic crisis and social learning for the provision of public services in two spanish municipalities economic crises pose challenges for the provision of public services but may also open up opportunities for social learning about how to achieve a sustainable society the main research question addressed in this paper is can economic crises catalyse social learning for a sustainable society the hypothesis of the paper is that social learning emerges in association with the reduction of consumption levels that follows degrowth or with the reconfiguration of infrastructure management practices and sustainable innovation that could lead to a transition to sustainability following this we empirically examine whether the crisis has led to social learning about the sustainable provision of public services in two similar municipalities in the north of spain after the economic crisis of 2008 we develop an interpretative analysis of individual experiences of learning from the crisis using a set of qualitative interviews with individuals who were involved in key decisions about public service delivery during or immediately after the crisis the analysis suggests that there has been a broader cultural change which is challenging institutional models of regional development that there has been a drive towards greater resource efficiency and that some opportunities have opened for entrepreneurs to develop sustainable innovations the findings support the view that the crisis may have fostered learning responses that could lead to either degrowth or a sustainable transition

a practice approach to the institutionalization of economic degrowth the degrowth literature is rich in critical debate about the unsustainability of the growth economies and in normative envisioning of a transition it lacks analyses on actual materialization and the nature of the change required there have been calls for research that pay attention to institutional constraints and possibilities of implementing a democratic process of sustainable degrowth this paper introduces a practice approach to institutional agency as a fruitful tool for future studies and politics of degrowth the potential of this approach is demonstrated through a struggle between finnish timebanking activists and the tax authorities the cultural and institutional transition promoted by radical bottom up initiatives requires a disruption of existing institutional arrangements some of which may be very persistent and supported by defenders who want to maintain the present institutional order in the case example the authorities and politicians managed to preserve the mechanisms through which certain sanctions are associated with the non compliance of timebanking with the income tax law a practice approach to institutionalization increases our understanding of institutional persistence and makes visible forces that support the present status quo it also enhances understanding of the opposing dynamics and gives tools to engage in more effective efforts to change institutions

the competitive effects of vertical agreements comment in a recent paper comanor and frech 1985 cf claim that a manufacturer enjoying a product differentiation advantage could impose exclusive dealing on distributors while also raising its wholesale price the two consumer groups in the model would then pay higher prices than under nonexclusive dealing cf also suggest that exclusive dealing is more likely to emerge when product differentiation is relatively strong cf s analysis does not carefully incorporate the constraints imposed by dealer rationality doing so within cf s model i reach opposite conclusions exclusive dealing will be accepted only if the manufacturer reduces its wholesale price to dealers relative to nonexclusive dealing price rises to one group of consumers but falls to the other moreover exclusive dealing is more likely to emerge when product differentiation is relatively weak

environment versus growth a criticism of degrowth and a plea for a growth in recent debates on environmental problems and policies the strategy of degrowth has appeared as an alternative to the paradigm of economic growth this new notion is critically evaluated by considering five common interpretations of it one conclusion is that these multiple interpretations make it an ambiguous and rather confusing concept another is that degrowth may not be an effective let alone an efficient strategy to reduce environmental pressure it is subsequently argued that a growth i e being indifferent about growth is a more logical social aim to substitute for the current goal of economic growth given that gdp per capita is a very imperfect indicator of social welfare in addition focusing ex ante on public policy is considered to be a strategy which ultimately is more likely to obtain the necessary democratic political support than an ex ante explicit degrowth strategy in line with this a policy package is proposed which consists of six elements some of which relate to concerns raised by degrowth supporters

the competitive effects of vertical agreements comment recent economic analyses of vertical restraints and integration emphasize the circumstances under which these arrangements are socially efficient efficiency claims have proven contentious however for exclusive dealing a vertical restraint that prohibits any outlet carrying a manufacturer s product from stocking substitute brands this paper analyzes the impact of exclusive dealing on competition and allocative efficiency opinions expressed on the impact of exclusive dealing range from the extreme view that it is invariably anticompetitive to the view that it is always procompetitive the u s supreme court has concluded that in hundreds if not thousands of communities where there is a single retailer for a product

on the dampening of competition effect of exclusive dealing the authors compare and contrast the profit and welfare effects of exclusive dealing sales through a common retailer and vertical integration as did y j lin 1990 the authors find that imperfectly competitive manufacturers prefer to impose exclusive dealing on their retailers unlike lin the authors find that welfare is higher under exclusive dealing than when products are sold through a common retailer this finding suggests a new interpretation of the standard stations v united states 1949 antitrust case copyright 1993 by blackwell publishing ltd

regime uncertainty and optimal investment timing abstract we construct a real options model in which a regime change is expected at a pre determined future time and study the effects of regime uncertainty on a firm s strategic investment decision taking into consideration the remaining time to the regime change and the probability of each regime state we show that just before the time of a regime change firms should act as if the worst case scenario was about to happen even if a good state is highly possible

community renewable energy at a crossroads a think piece on degrowth technology and the democratization of the german energy system abstract degrowth activists and scholars have questioned society s current levels of material throughput and energy use the energy sector is at the core of any modern economy and germany serves as an international showcase for the transition of a large industrialized economy to a low carbon energy system diverse actors organizational models and technologies have contributed to the initiation of germany s energy transition through a wide range of community renewable energy projects the think piece investigates how far these diverse actors embrace the aims of the degrowth movement it also provides a critical account of on the ground realities through six hypotheses and contrasts them with claims made by the degrowth movement it is suggested that community renewable energy projects are at a crossroads while many projects have familiarized thousands of people with alternative economic models there is little evidence of a general change in attitudes towards technology consumption or equity in conclusion a major effort is needed to open initiatives to less affluent actors oppose recent trends of commodification and prevent community renewable energy projects from being engrossed by the dominant political and economic system

investment with uncertain tax policy does random tax policy discourage investment we consider the impact of tax policy uncertainty on firm level and aggregate investment comparing investment behaviour when uncertainty is due to a shock following geometric brownian motion gbm versus when random discrete jumps in tax policy occur expectations of the likelihood of a tax policy switch have an important negative impact on the gain to delaying investment in the latter model and time to investment can fall with increasing tax policy uncertainty aggregate investment simulations indicate that capital formation is adversely affected by increases in uncertainty in the traditional gbm model but can be enhanced in the jump process model

downstream vertical foreclosure and upstream innovation i examine a link between downstream foreclosure and upstream innovation the crucial ingredient of the model is the presence of dynamic economies of scale upstream in the form of competition in r d the reason an upstream supplier has a captive buyer is to force rival suppliers to incur the disadvantages of low scale production and discourage them from innovating the downstream buyer is offered favorable terms and is convinced to sign an exclusive supply contract and accept captivity in this context downstream foreclosure may reduce consumer welfare

investment under uncertainty and policy change in this paper the impact of a policy change on the investment behavior of the firm is studied in an incomplete information setting the policy change occurs when a stochastic process describing the state of the economic environment reaches a certain trigger the firm has incomplete information about the trigger and knows only its probability distribution consequently both the firm s conjecture concerning the trigger value as well as the precision of this conjecture serve as input parameters we derive the optimal investment rule maximizing the value of the firm and show that the impact of the trigger value uncertainty on the optimal investment threshold is non monotonic the threshold decreases with uncertainty for its low levels while the reverse is true if uncertainty is high furthermore we provide results concerning the valuation of the firm s investment opportunity and present some policy implications

a degrowth transition pathways for the degrowth niche to replace the capitalist growth regime abstract facing the intertwined environmental social and economic crisis requires us to seriously consider alternatives to the current capitalist system including the emerging concept of degrowth existing understandings of degrowth have focused on characterizing the shape the key elements and the proposals for a degrowth society however its dynamic and evolving nature as an alternative vision of the future and the dynamics of a transition toward degrowth are inadequately considered this paper seeks to address this conceptual gap through a reconceptualisation of degrowth as a radical niche innovation to the capitalist growth regime by extending the multi level perspective framework to the capitalist growth system we undertake a critical reconsideration of the multi level perspective exposing key assumptions of this framework grounded in capitalist economic theory through this we propose a pluriversal potential pathway for change to consider this further a bibliometric analysis is used to measure and visualize research activity in degrowth as a proxy for the processes of development of the degrowth niche then we return to the multi level perspective to consider two potential pathways for change involving the degrowth niche and the capitalist growth regime finally we point to areas for further research that build on this new conceptualisation of a degrowth transition

the economics of degrowth economic degrowth is ecologically desirable and possibly inevitable but under what conditions can it become socially sustainable how can we have full employment and economic stability without growth what will happen to public spending and to public debt how would production be organised in a degrowing economy and under what plausible socio political conditions could such grand changes happen standard economic theories and models ignore these questions for them economic growth is an axiomatic necessity this article reviews recent contributions in the economics of degrowth and identifies research avenues for ecological economists

in defence of degrowth abstract this article defends the proposal of sustainable degrowth a starting premise is that resource and co2 limits render further growth of the economy unsustainable if degrowth is inevitable the question is how it can become socially sustainable i e a prosperous and stable rather than a catastrophic descent pricing mechanisms alone are unlikely to secure smooth adaptation a full ensemble of environmental and redistributive policies is required including among others policies for a basic income reduction of working hours environmental and consumption taxes and controls on advertising policies like these that threaten to harm the economy are less and less likely to be implemented within existing market economies whose basic institutions financial property political and redistributive depend on and mandate continuous economic growth an intertwined cultural and political change is needed that will embrace degrowth as a positive social development and reform those institutions that make growth an imperative sustainable degrowth is therefore not just a structuring concept it is a radical political project that offers a new story and a rallying slogan for a social coalition built around the aspiration to construct a society that lives better with less

degrowth business framework implications for sustainable development abstract recent years have seen a revival in growth scepticism yet degrowth in relation to the macroeconomic level has received almost exclusive attention this resulted in a lack of literature on how post growth and specifically degrowth visions of economy could be implemented including from the perspective of firms and other organisations this paper focuses on degrowth literature and fields of knowledge which share a similar or sympathetic perspective regarding the undesirability of economic growth and desirability of living within planetary boundaries while pursuing wellbeing it then applies degrowth vision to firms and identifies potential elements of a business for a degrowth economy here referred to as a degrowth business these elements comprise a degrowth business framework the framework is centred around the following groups 1 environment 2 people and non humans and 3 deviation from profit maximisation imperative it aims to contribute to an emerging discussion on what firms should be like for a degrowth economy and society to be possible

degrowth taking stock and reviewing an emerging academic paradigm degrowth has evolved within a decade from an activist movement into a multi disciplinary academic paradigm however an overview taking stock of the peer refereed degrowth literature is yet missing here we review 91 articles that were published between 2006 and 2015 we find that the academic degrowth discourse occupies a small but expanding niche at the intersection of social and applied environmental sciences the discourse is shaped by authors from high income mainly mediterranean countries until 2012 articles largely constitute conceptual essays endorsed by normative claims more recently degrowth has branched out into modelling empirical assessments and the study of concrete implementations authors tend to agree in that economic growth cannot be sustained ad infinitum on a resource constraint planet and that degrowth requires far reaching societal change whether degrowth should be considered as a collectively consented choice or an environmentally imposed inevitability constitutes a major debate among degrowth thinkers we argue that the academic discourse could benefit from rigid hypotheses testing through input output modelling material flow analysis life cycle assessments or social surveys by analyzing the potentials for non market value creation and identifying concrete well being benefits the degrowth discourse could receive wider public support and contribute to a paradigmatic change in the social sciences

women nature and the social construction of economic man abstract this paper argues that the social construction economic man is the product of a hierarchical dualism in western society that has also created rational man and scientific man women and the natural world form the subordinated half of these dualisms central to this paper is the claim that this dualism is not only a cultural theoretical one but also a material one the social construction of economic man is the product of a bifurcated knowledge system and a materially divided society economic man reflects a society in which the embeddedness and embodiedness of humanity is hidden by the division of mind from body and science culture from the natural world for this reason it is not possible to incorporate women and nature into the economy through the commodity form by according them a value as price it is argued that the economic system can only exist if women and nature remain externalised as women form the bridge between an autonomous individualised man and the biological ecological underpinning of his existence central to this analysis is the distinction between social and natural biological time economic man lives in social time clock time while women are responsible for biological time this is not because women are closer to nature biology in an essential sense rather this relationship is imposed upon them by a male dominated society

strategic aspects of vertical delegation abstract this paper offers an overview of the strategic aspects of situations where either institutionally or contractually a firm delegates some of its decisions to another firm a subsidiary an internal division etc delegation may have several kinds of strategic benefits in the short term it may improve the competitive position of the firm or induce a more lenient behavior from its competitors in the long run it may be used to deter the entry of potential competitors to foreclose market access or to induce actual competitors to exit the paper analyzes the trade off between these possible benefits and the agency costs of delegation and emphasizes the key issues of credibility and commitment

the ecological economics of economic democracy abstract ecological economics is at a sharp crossroads today mostly due to the unprecedented scale of the intertwined social and ecological crises we face we argue that the discipline should engage with the thinking and practices around alternatives to capitalism more substantially as this is essential and invaluable for the discipline s ability to contribute to a just and sustainable future we outline an agenda for future ecological economics research on economic alternatives that are shaped by the concrete ways in which economic democracy deals with issues of uncertainty complexity and value incommensurability and contribute to a kind of political economy that ecological economics would advocate we lay out how this question could be operationalised within the context of allocation and exchange i e alternatives to market production and investment i e alternatives to capitalist firm and economic subjectivities i e alternatives to self interest

community energy and social entrepreneurship addressing purpose organisation and embeddedness of renewable energy projects in many european countries renewable energy has evolved through decentralised and small scale forms of organisation these different initiatives are often denominated as community energy in both research and practice by examining community energy initiatives through a social entrepreneurship lens we develop an integrated approach for the analysis of small scale and bottom up energy initiatives our approach relies on three specific analytical dimensions the purpose of the initiative its form of organisation and ownership and its embeddedness into local community or wider social movements we apply this analytical framework to four case studies selected from a larger empirical study on newly emerged forms of organisation in the field of renewable energy across the european union drawing on our findings we characterise social enterprises in the energy sector as collectively owned organisations that combine renewable energy production with more overarching goals of environmental and social transformation and a specific quest for civic participation these initiatives show strong relationships with different social movements and even a potential to transcend the local scale we conclude that given similarities in the two areas of research provide fertile ground for mutual advancement both conceptually and empirically

selective contracts foreclosure and the chicago school view abstract i examine a mechanism by which exclusive supply contracts may inefficiently deter entry into the market in the model the incumbent supplier selectively offers contracts only to some buyers and convinces them to consent by guaranteeing them low prices the contracts strengthen the monopoly position of the incumbent supplier and allow it to extract rents from the remaining buyers that were not offered contracts aside from the favorable contract terms buyers have another reason to consent to the exclusivity scheme the latter raises the input costs of rival buyers that were not offered contracts the model has potential applications to the recent microsoft antitrust case 1994 i define exclusive supply contract as an agreement under which an upstream firm becomes the exclusive supplier of a downstream firm the downstream firm is prohibited from buying from other suppliers

optimal pollution standards and non compliance in a dynamic framework in this paper we present a stackelberg differential game to study the dynamic interaction between a polluting firm and a regulator who sets pollution limits overtime at each time the firm settles emissions taking into account the fine for non compliance with the pollution limit and balances current costs of investments in a capital stock which allows for future emission reductions we derive two main results first we show that the optimal pollution limit decreases as the capital stock increases while both emissions and the level of non compliance decrease second we find that offering fine discounts in exchange for firm s capital investment is socially desirable we numerically obtain the optimal value of such discount which crucially depends on the severity of the fine in the limiting scenario with a very large severity of the fine the optimal discount implies that no penalties are levied since the firm shows adequate adaptation progress through capital investment

investment under regime uncertainty impact of competition and preemption abstract in this study we analyze the investment timing problem and introduce a model of two firms competing for investment preemption each of which knows in advance the time at which the economic condition that will have an impact on the investment changes we qualitatively show how two firms strategically optimize their investment timing taking into account competition and preemption

assessing the degrowth discourse a review and analysis of academic degrowth policy proposals abstract debates on ecological and social limits to economic growth and new ways to deal with resource scarcity without compromising human well being have re emerged in the last few years central to many of these is a call for a degrowth approach in this paper a framework is developed to support a systematic analysis of degrowth in the academic literature this article attempts to present a clearer notion of what the academic degrowth literature explores by identifying organising and analysing a set of proposals for action retrieved from a selection of articles the framework is applied to classify proposals according to their alignment to ecological economics policy objectives sustainable scale fair distribution and efficient allocation type of approach top down versus bottom up and geographical focus local national or international a total of 128 peer reviewed articles focused on degrowth were reviewed and 54 that include proposals for action were analysed the proposals identified align with three broad goals 1 reduce the environmental impact of human activities 2 redistribute income and wealth both within and between countries and 3 promote the transition from a materialistic to a convivial and participatory society the findings indicate that the majority of degrowth proposals are national top down approaches focusing on government as a major driver of change rather than local bottom up approaches as advocated by many degrowth proponents the most emphasised aspects in the degrowth literature are related to social equity closely followed by environmental sustainability topics such as population growth and the implications of degrowth for developing nations are largely neglected and represent an important area for future research moreover there is a need for a deeper analysis of how degrowth proposals would act in combination

social enterprises and non market capitals a path to degrowth the aim of this paper is to look at alternatives to the classic for profit shareholding enterprise and to suggest how such alternatives might be supported within the current economic system another aim is to link the social enterprise and degrowth discourses we first re define the economy as including non monetised sectors the core economy and the economy of nature and discuss the liminal zone of not for profit and not only for profit organisations we then look at social enterprise definitions from a degrowth perspective and explain why the dimensions of scale place environment and provisioning patterns need more space in the social enterprise discourse after that we define non market capitals as capitals taken out of the market and placed under local member democratic control and explain their importance in a degrowth economy we give examples of non market capitals and suggest a model involving mutual support between primary and secondary social enterprises finally we suggest areas where more research is needed in this emerging field of inquiry

upfront payments and exclusion in downstream markets although upfront payments are often observed in contracts between manufacturers and retailers little is known about their competitive effects or the role retailers play in securing them in this article we consider a model in which two competing retailers make take it or leave it offers to a common manufacturer we find that upfront payments are a feature of equilibrium contracts and in all equilibria only one retailer buys from the manufacturer these findings support the claims of small manufacturers who argue that they are often unable to obtain widespread distribution for their products because of upfront payments copyright 2007 rand

the governance features of social enterprise and social network activities of collective food buying groups abstract collective food buying groups such as community supported agriculture or self organised citizen groups for delivery of food baskets have emerged throughout the world as an important niche innovation for promoting more sustainable agri food systems these initiatives seek to bring about societal change they do so however not through protest or interest based lobbying but by organising a protected space for learning and experimentation with lifestyle changes for sustainable food consumption and production practices in particular they aim to promote social learning on a broad set of sustainability values beyond a focus on fresh and healthy food only which characterizes many of the individual consumer oriented local food chain initiatives this paper analyses the governance features of such local food buying groups by comparing 104 groups in five cities in belgium we find that the social networking activities of these groups as compared to the social enterprise activities have led to establish specific governance mechanisms whereas the main focus of the social enterprise activities is the organisation of the food provisioning logistics the focus of the social network activities is the sharing of resources with other sustainable food initiatives dissemination of information and broader discussion on sustainability issues

discount chains and brand policy retail chains are observed in many industries the question addressed here is whether retail chains can exploit buyer power by excluding some brands in a theoretical model with two differentiated producers and a single retailer we show that a retailer will require exclusivity exclude a brand if the brands are sufficiently symmetric in demand potential exclusivity will increase welfare if the excluded brand is a close substitute for the brand carried by the retailer our theoretical results are also set in relation to some findings from the norwegian grocery industry jel classification l12 l42

equilibrium incentives for exclusive dealing in a differentiated products oligopoly we consider the incentives for oligopolistic manufacturers to adopt exclusive dealing manufacturers producing differentiated brands can choose to distribute through exclusive retail dealerships or nonexclusive dealerships with nonexclusive dealing manufacturers face an interbrand externality because brand enhancing investments made by one manufacturer may benefit the brands of other manufacturers although exclusive dealing eliminates this externality oligopolistic manufacturers may not choose exclusive dealing exclusive dealing enhances the incentive to invest but the promotional investments are a form of competition between manufacturers thus manufacturers might earn higher profits with nonexclusive dealing making lower promotional investments we find cases in which nonexclusive dealing is a dominant strategy we also find cases in which some but not all manufacturers adopt exclusive dealing moreover even if adoption of exclusive dealing by all manufacturers is the equilibrium it can arise from a prisoner s dilemma in that each manufacturer would prefer nonexclusive dealing

the economic theory of vertical restraints the types of contracts arising in a typical vertical manufacturer retailer relationship are more sophisticated than a simple uniform price in addition to setting per unit prices manufacturers and retailers also revert to non linear pricing and non price instruments these instruments or contracts are referred to as vertical restraints and can take the form of franchise fees resale price maintenance exclusive dealing exclusive territories and slotting allowances the use and the effects of one type of instrument versus another depend crucially on specific market assumptions upstream and downstream and on the division of bargaining power between manufacturers and retailers this paper surveys the industrial organization literature on retail pricing and shows that vertical restraint instruments have important effects on producer and consumer prices market structure efficiency and welfare

the prerequisites for a degrowth paradigm shift insights from critical political economy abstract what would it take for a degrowth paradigm shift to take place drawing on contemporary critical political economy scholarship this article identifies four prerequisites for socio economic paradigm shifts deep crisis an alternative political project a comprehensive coalition of social forces promoting the project in political struggles and broad based consent it is argued that on the one hand there is much to suggest that current crises cannot be resolved under existing institutional frameworks and that degrowth is a political project that provides solutions to some of the key problems currently facing humanity on the other hand the prospects for a degrowth paradigm shift remain bleak unlike political projects that became hegemonic in the past degrowth has neither support from a comprehensive coalition of social forces nor any consent to its agenda among the broader population