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This paper aims to explain the causal complexity between ecosystems of doing business and living standards based on the theoretical model of the ecosystem of doing business proposed by Li (2019) and Du et al. (2020). By integrating ecological theory, transaction cost theory and institutional logics theory, this study explored effective ecosystems of doing business that achieve high living standards and explained the interpretive mechanisms behind different ecosystems of doing business. Moreover, this study also analyzed whether there were any necessary elements that lead to high living standards and discussed how the interactions between these elements influence carrying capacity and transaction costs from government logic and market logic, thus affecting living standards.

In this study, fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) and necessary condition analysis (NCA) were combined to analyze the data from the 2020 China City Statistical Yearbook, covering the main socioeconomic statistical data of cities at all levels in 2019.

This study found that no individual factor of the ecosystems of doing business was necessary to achieve high living standards, but the high level of human capital, innovation capacity, financial access and market demand play a significant role in achieving high living standards. Furthermore, two effective types of ecosystems of doing business lead to high living standards, namely, market dominance (government’s “invisible hand” or “nudging hand”) and government–market logic mutualism/symbiosis (government’s “helping hand”).

First, this work found that individual elements were not a necessary condition for high living standards, not only in kind but also in degree, complementing fsQCA with NCA, which indicates that environmental elements can be substituted by others. Second, this study considered the complex effects and explained the mechanisms behind different ecosystems of doing business, drawing on ecological theory, transaction cost theory and institutional logics theory from a configurational perspective. This study deepened the theories’ applications in the field of living standards and further discussed the elements interactions. Third, this study introduced configurational perspective and QCA into living standards research and adopted a mixed method that combines fsQCA and NCA to analyze the causal complexity between ecosystems of doing business and people’s living standards.

The European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) calls for far-reaching changes to the way economic activity will occur in EU digital markets. Before its remedies are imposed, it is critical to assess their impacts on individual markets, the digital sector, and the overall European economy. The European Commission (EC) released an Impact Assessment in support of the DMA that purports to evaluate it using cost/benefit analysis.

An economic evaluation of the DMA should consider its full impacts on dynamic competition. The Impact Assessment neither assesses the DMA's impact on dynamic competition in the digital economy nor evaluates the impacts of specific DMA prohibitions and obligations. Instead, it considers benefits in general and largely ignores costs. We study its benefit assessments and find they are based on highly inappropriate methodologies and assumptions. A cost/benefit study using inappropriate methodologies and largely ignoring costs cannot provide a sound policy assessment.

Instead of promoting dynamic competition between platforms, the DMA will likely reinforce existing market structures, ossify market boundaries, and stunt European innovation. The DMA is likely to chill R&D by encouraging free riding on the investments of others, which discourages making those investments. Avoiding harm to innovation is critical because innovation delivers large, positive spillover benefits, driving increases in productivity, employment, wages, and prosperity.

The DMA prioritizes static over dynamic competition, with the potential to harm the European economy. Given this, the Impact Assessment does not demonstrate that the DMA will be beneficial overall, and its implementation must be carefully tailored to alleviate or lessen its potential to harm Europe’s economic performance.

This chapter highlights why, with the current situation in a VUCA world, governments should consider to ‘leave alone’ the educational policy for the prosperity of special education. One possible way is that governments should let the ‘economic invisible hand’ take on the arrangement of inclusive education and proceed without interference to induce educational competition and the effectiveness of inclusive education.

High levels of child obesity alongside rising stunting and the absence of a coherent food policy have deemed UK’s food system to be broken. The National Food Strategy (NFS) was debated intensely in media, with discussions on how and who should fix the food system.

Using a mixed methods approach, the authors conduct framing analysis on traditional media and sentiment analysis of twitter reactions to the NFS to identify frames used to shape food system policy interventions.

The study finds evidence that the media coverage of the NFS often utilised the tropes of “culture wars” shaping the debate of who is responsible to fix the food system – the government, the public or the industry. NFS recommendations were portrayed as issues of free choice to shift the debate away from government action correcting for market failure. In contrast, the industry was showcased as equipped to intervene on its own accord. Dietary recommendations made by the NFS were depicted as hurting the poor, painting a picture of helplessness and loss of control, while their voices were omitted and not represented in traditional media.

British media’s alignment with free market economic thinking has implications for food systems reform, as it deters the government from acting and relies on the invisible hand of the market to fix the system. Media firms should move beyond tropes of culture wars to discuss interventions that reform the structural causes of the UK’s broken food systems.

As traditional media coverage struggles to capture the diversity of public perception; the authors supplement framing analysis with sentiment analysis of Twitter data. To the best of our knowledge, no such media (and social media) analysis of the NFS has been conducted. The paper is also original as it extends our understanding of how media alignment with free market economic thinking has implications for food systems reform, as it deters the government from acting and relies on the invisible hand of the market to fix the system.

The paper analyzes how the goal-setting of two individuals or social units A and B determines the utilities, which the two parties can gain in a dyadic interaction.

The analysis is based on a dyadic utility space representing the utilities of A and B along the x and y axis, respectively. In this space the goal-orientation of an individual action is mapped with a vector, where its angle shows the combination of utilities of A and B aimed at, and the length corresponds to the strength of an action.

Analyzing actions of A and responses of B in the dyadic utility space allows (a) calculating single and joint utilities, (b) identifying the narrow range of equal utility for both and (c) identifying four vectors for maximizing different combinations of utility. Studying combinations of these four vectors in a 4 × 4 ‘Interaction - Utility Matrix’ shows how the goal-setting of A for a prime action widely predetermines, before a response of B, the realizable dyadic utility for both.

The dyadic utility space allows illustrating any dyadic interaction: It shows all possible dyadic “payoffs” investigated in game theory; it allows studying repeated exchange and resulting accumulation of utility; it allows mapping power relations.

The paper shows the interrelation between cybernetic principles of control, goal-orientated human behavior and the utility concept of social sciences. And it allows rejecting Adam Smith’s 18th myth of an “invisible hand”.

This chapter focuses on critical thinking as a new, powerful, and specialized tool and technique for understanding and analyzing the subtle operations of the free enterprise capitalist market system and its ethics and morality. Everything in the world of consumers and market enterprise systems are determined by our supply–demand system that in turn are determined by our presumed limitless production–distribution and consumption (LDPC) systems. From a critical thinking viewpoint, we study the free enterprise capitalist system (FECS) as a dynamic, interconnected organic system and not as a discrete or compartmentalized body of disaggregate parts. Systems thinking with critical thinking calls for a shift of our mindset from seeing just parts to seeing the whole reality in its structured dynamic unity; both mandate that we see ourselves as active participators or partners of FECS and not as mere cogs in its wheels or as mere factors of its production processes. Critical thinking seeks to identify the “structures” that underlie complex situations in FECS with those that bring about high- versus low-leveraged changes in various versions of capitalism. Specifically, this chapter applies critical thinking to FECS as defined by its founder, Adam Smith, in 1776 to its fundamental and structural assumptions, and as supported or critiqued by serious scholars such as Karl Marx, Maynard Keynes, C. K. Prahalad and Allen Hammond (inclusive capitalism), John Mackey and Rajendra Sisodia (conscious capitalism), and others.

A university’s brand is a key competitive advantage in higher education (HE). This study examines the university's reputation’s intermediary impact on core services (emotional environment, perceived faculty and course suitability) and brand loyalty in private universities in Iran.

A quantitative method was used to achieve research objectives. The data collected from students enrolled in major private universities in the capital of Iran were analyzed to test the proposed model, both directly and indirectly, using structural equation modeling (SEM).

The findings confirmed all of the hypothesized relationships. Prominently, the core service construct (emotional environment, perceived faculty and course suitability) was found to be significantly affecting the university brand reputation. The study found evidence for the impact of university reputation on students' loyalty. Findings also indicated the presence of several indirect relationships among the considered dimensions.

Current research offers implications for universities that are met with the perpetual challenge of survival in the competitive HE marketplace. Findings from the study not only help build theory on university brand loyalty but also make an essential contribution towards guiding managers in developing effective strategies by building reputation and loyalty by concentrating on the most crucial determinants.

Although research in HE marketing is growing, the effects of university core services on building loyalty have not garnered attention, which is theoretically a vital construct. The paper presents a new framework to realize university brand loyalty with the help of integrated relationships among select dimensions in the setting of an emerging HE market.

Free banking theory, as developed in Adam Smith’s 1776 treatise, “The Wealth of Nations” is a useful tool in determining the extent to which the “invisible hand of the market” should prevail in regulatory policy. The purpose of this study is to provide a timely review of the literature, evaluating the theory’s relevance to regulation of financial technology generally and cryptocurrencies (cryptos) specifically.

The methodology is qualitative, applying free banking theory as developed in the literature to technology-defined environments. Recent legislative developments in the regulation of cryptocurrencies in the UK, European Union and the USA, are drawn upon.

Participants in volatile cryptocurrency markets should bear the consequences of inadvisable investments in accordance with free banking theory. The decentralised nature of cryptocurrencies and the exchanges on which these are traded militate against coordinated oversight by central banks, supporting a qualified free banking approach. Differences regarding statutory definitions of cryptos as units of exchange, tokens or investment securities and the propensity of these to transition between categories across the business cycle render attempts at concerted classification at the international level problematic. Prevention of criminality through extension of Suspicious Activity Reporting to exchanges and intermediaries should be the principal objective of policymakers, rather than definitions of evolving products that risk stifling technological innovation.

The study proposes that instead of a traditional regulatory approach to cryptos, which emphasises holders’ safety and compensation, a free banking approach combined with a focus on criminality would be a more effective and pragmatic way forward.

In The Americans, Philip and Elizabeth Jennings are undercover operatives for the Soviet Union. In that capacity, they are responsible for crimes including murder and espionage. Yet they also pose as a law-abiding family, running a small business, raising children, and making friends with their neighbours. By ‘practicing’ American life, Philip becomes more American, forging an identity more receptive to American values and attitudes. This chapter draws on concepts from the literature on legal consciousness to examine the relationship between identity and hegemony. Studies of legal consciousness emphasise that consciousness is not simply legal attitudes or even ideology; rather legal consciousness is reflected in the way that people enact their legal beliefs and values. Those enactments help individuals form identities, but those identities are constrained by the hegemonic ideologies that are prevalent in the culture. Law and legal consciousness are important to both processes.