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As food aid is still for a great part dependent upon the donation of food surplus and as the number of persons relying on food charities is increasing, it is important to further investigate which donation system responds best to the needs of the beneficiaries. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the needs regarding the format and content of the food parcels in a selected social service in Ghent, Belgium. The “format” relates to how the food parcels are distributed, the “content” to the usability of the food products and whether additional products currently not offered are required by the beneficiaries.

The research is based on a qualitative study at a selected food charity in Ghent, using a semi-structured in-depth interview with 30 respondents who receive food parcels.

The food parcel beneficiaries report the need for freedom of choice regarding the offered food products (format). Fixed food parcels should be avoided. Also a need for more vegetables, milk, fresh (halal) meat and meat products was expressed (content), even though the charity purchased a great deal of additional “standard” food products to provide nutritious and varied food parcels. It should be further investigated whether other donation systems such as social groceries or restaurants meet the needs of the beneficiaries to a greater extent, or whether certain adjustments such as purchasing even more standard food products are possible to uphold.

To the authors’ knowledge this research is one of the first scientific studies addressing the needs of food parcel receivers in Belgium. It forms a basis for investigating which type of food donation answers best to the needs of the beneficiaries in Belgium or in other countries.

The present study aimed to provide an understanding of the roles of community-based financial service organizations (i.e. rotating savings and credit associations [ROSCAs] as institutional pillars in facilitating low-income, unbanked consumers’ access to informal financial services).

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 39 low-income, unbanked consumers participating in ROSCAs in Pakistan, where only 21% of adults have a bank account and almost four out of five individuals live on a low income. The obtained data were analyzed using the thematic analysis technique.

ROSCAs’ regulatory, sociocultural and cognitive aspects facilitate low-income, unbanked consumers’ utilization of informal financial services owing to their approachability by, suitability for, and fairness to such consumers. Thus, they promote such consumers’ financial inclusion.

Low-income consumers are mostly unable to access formal financial services due to the existing supply- and demand-side impediments. Understanding ROSCAs’ institutional functioning can help formal financial service providers create more transformative financial services based on the positive institutional aspects of ROSCAs to enhance poor consumers’ financial inclusion and well-being.

The inclusion of low-income, unbanked consumers in formal banking services will help them better control their finances.

Many low-income, unbanked consumers in developing countries utilize informal financial services to meet their basic financial needs, but service researchers have rarely investigated how informal financial institutions function. The present study showed that ROSCAs, as informal institutions, meet low-income, unbanked consumers’ personal, social and financial needs in a befitting manner, which encourages such consumers to use the financial services offered by ROSCAs.

In the past few years, the view that participation in informal and/or second‐hand modes of goods acquisition results from economic necessity has been contested by an agency‐orientated cultural reading that views such engagement to be about the search for fun, sociality, distinction, discernment, the spectacular and so forth, and more recently by an approach that ascribes agency‐orientated motives to affluent populations and economic rationales to deprived populations. Drawing upon 120 face‐to‐face interviews conducted in the English city of Leicester however, the aim of this article is to display how engagement cannot be simply reduced to either economic necessity or agency. Finding that both co‐exist in people’s explanations for participation and combine in varying ways in different populations, a both/and approach is here advocated that recognises the entanglement of both economic necessity and choice in rationales for participation in informal and second‐hand modes of goods acquisition.

Although in the late 1960s Chile had already solved traditional problems such as basic literacy, and access to primary education and training of highly qualified university professionals, little advance was made by the military government in the 1970s. Thus in the early 1980s the military government introduced economic competition in the education system, hoping to increase the quality of education in spite of projected further cuts in public resources for education. The swift implementation of the market model in education was soon affected by unforeseen constraints and effects, and later on the economic crisis forced changes in initial regulations several times during the next decade. Economic competition eventually generated a substantial increment of private education; decentralised decisions increased cost recovery; but it also increased inequity in education outcomes; reduced the ability of the system to attract good candidates to an academic career; and reduced the share of education in the GNP.

In order to succeed in an action under the Equal Pay Act 1970, should the woman and the man be employed by the same employer on like work at the same time or would the woman still be covered by the Act if she were employed on like work in succession to the man? This is the question which had to be solved in Macarthys Ltd v. Smith. Unfortunately it was not. Their Lordships interpreted the relevant section in different ways and since Article 119 of the Treaty of Rome was also subject to different interpretations, the case has been referred to the European Court of Justice.

This paper aims to explore the nature and degree to which marketing affects consumption behavior of bottom of the pyramid (BOP) population. The objective of the study is to examine, identify and explain aspects of consumption behavior that evidences the influence of marketing practices on the BOP consumers.

The study uses a long interview-based approach for an in-depth qualitative investigation of consumption behaviors of BOP consumers.

Key findings that emerged from the research are: widespread usage of international brands and expenditure on products outside of the core bundle of consumption, susceptibility to sales promotions, need to look and feel good and use “fairness” creams, susceptibility to advertising and celebrity endorsements and influence of store personnel.

For managers, this research suggests a careful examination of the likely consequences of their marketing actions. A set of guidelines are provided to them for doing business in a responsible manner at the BOP markets.

Recommendations for public policymakers are offered that stress on the need for ethical marketing exchanges to address the concern over possible exploitation of this vulnerable population.

Extant literature on BOP has largely been conceptual in nature, relying on various case studies. This study empirically examines the nature and influence of marketing in the purchase behavior of BOP consumers. This is perhaps the first study providing empirical support to the argument that the poor consumers divert their scarce financial resources from fulfilling basic needs to purchasing non-essential discretionary products under the influence of BOP marketing.

Investigates the differences in protocols between arbitral tribunals and courts, with particular emphasis on US, Greek and English law. Gives examples of each country and its way of using the law in specific circumstances, and shows the variations therein. Sums up that arbitration is much the better way to gok as it avoids delays and expenses, plus the vexation/frustration of normal litigation. Concludes that the US and Greek constitutions and common law tradition in England appear to allow involved parties to choose their own judge, who can thus be an arbitrator. Discusses e‐commerce and speculates on this for the future.

With their national economy rapidly and structurally turning away from the long-cherished stable employment regime since the national financial crisis, South Koreans’ poverty is increasingly manifested through financial entrapment ensuing from heavy personal indebtedness to banks, kin members and friends, and, the worst of all, private usurers. The world’s once most aggressively saving population turned into one of the world’s most indebted populations merely in a decade. Having lost its once-proud capacity of a developmental state, the South Korean government has instead been busy devising various public schemes for offering grassroots consumer loans in supposedly preferential terms. Consumer credit, instead of social wage, has been offered rather generously by this increasingly neoliberalized state. This is another crucial component of financialization in the contemporary world political economy. South Korea’s emergency measures for escaping the national financial crisis have paradoxically ended up transplanting the financial trouble from banks and industrial enterprises to grassroots households.

This paper aims to explore how the Celtic Tiger economic boom and Great Recession influenced drug and alcohol use in one Irish city.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 48 people, living in Cork City, who had previously used drugs and/or alcohol problematically. All participants had engaged with services for their problematic use and had at least one year of abstinence at time of interview.

Some participants reported that their drug and/or alcohol consumption increased during the economic boom; others, who were already in (self-defined) active addiction, reported how full employment lessened some of the harms of their problematic use. For others, problematic use struck once the economy entered a downturn and, heavy drink and drug use became a means of soothing the strains of economic recession.

The paper provides two key contributions. Methodologically, it demonstrates how large-scale national quantitative data can mask local idiosyncratic tendencies, suggesting the need for mixed-method approaches for understanding drug market trends. The paper also provides insights into the impact of global and local economic conditions on drug and alcohol consumption in Ireland.

This is the first paper in a volume devoted exclusively to antitrust law and economics. It summarizes the other papers and addresses two issues. First, after showing that the federal courts generally view consumer welfare as the ultimate goal of antitrust law, it asks what they mean by that term. It concludes that recent decisions appear more likely to equate consumer welfare with the well-being of consumers in the relevant market than with economic efficiency. Second, it asks whether a buyer must possess monopsony power to induce a price discrimination that is not cost justified. It concludes that a buyer can often obtain an unjustified concession simply by wielding bargaining power, but the resulting concession may frequently – though not always – improve consumer welfare.