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Domestic violence is a social ill that results in significant social costs. While the employment costs of domestic violence are obvious to victims and advocates for battered women, there is little research that examines the relationship between abuse and women’s employment opportunities. In this paper, we build on existing models of domestic violence by presenting a model that allows for a simultaneous relationship between women’s income and violence. The validity of the model is tested empirically using several different data sets. The results are mixed. While the empirical evidence supports the model’s assumption that violence has a negative impact on the labor market productivity of working women, it also indicates that being a battered woman does not significantly decrease the likelihood that a woman participates in the labor market. In fact, empirical results indicate that after controlling for the simultaneity of violence and work, battered women are more likely to work than women who are not abused. While women who are victims of intimate abuse most likely find it much harder to work outside the home, these negative effects may be offset by strong incentives to increase their economic independence by holding jobs.

Purpose: Like other Southeast European countries, Kosova applies the principles of a market economy. Despite the difficulties, in the efforts to create a free and competitive market economy, Kosovo must undertake reforms to face the reality of economic integration and global markets in general. In this regard, an important aspect is the implementation of economic reforms, the justice system, and the effective implementation of competition law under the ‘Acquis communautaire’. Therefore, the purpose of the research is to analyse the issues related to the regulation and protection of competition in Kosovo, with particular attention to controlling the concentration of enterprises based on EU practices.

Methodology: In answering the above questions, we carried out a desk review of comprehensive professional literature, EU treaties and directives, international competition institutions standards and requirements as well as other national laws and legal acts.

Findings: Moderate progress has been made, but the necessary steps are still taken to have a competitive economy and to be in the right position for EU integration. Concentrations are one of the important parts of competition law where through this practice it is possible to merge and acquire enterprises. Many cases of abuse can be encountered in this type of practice, so the role of competent supervisory authorities is necessary to regulate them. Concentration problems have been addressed since the establishment of joint ventures and their operation within the market modernisation becomes more complex both in the application and in the investigation by the competent controlling authorities. The analysis and functioning of the internal market, as well as the lack of practices in the field of concentration within an effective competition, is the focus of this chapter.

Significance: This chapter addresses issues raised in terms of competition law and possible improvements that can be made through the implementation of European regulations, creating market stability and sustainable economies in the long-run.

The stable and predictable agricultural, infrastructure, manufacturing, and energy economies of hard products have been followed by economies that offer softer products such as services, information, knowledge, health care, digitization, networking, globalization, entertainment, sustainability, and currently, well-being and happiness. Such soft market products are loaded with buyer–seller information asymmetries (BSIA) that create market risk, market uncertainty, market chaos, and ambiguity – all of which are specific types of market turbulence. In this context, this chapter investigates the phenomena of turbulence, specifically environmental turbulence whose major subsets are technological turbulence and market turbulence. We cite several recent geopolitical variables and events that have aggravated market turbulence such as Chinese economic invasion of global markets, global climate change, Brexit, international asylum-seeking migrations, artificial intelligence, and demonetization. We also define market turbulence as varied forms of BSIA for which both marketers and consumers must have appropriate joint responsibility. In addition, we focus on ethical and moral marketing responsibilities for reducing BSIA under each type of turbulence.

As other worldwide sourcing industries the retail sector is also prone to various forms of corruption. In particular large retail chains doing business in developing countries are often faced with corrupt bureaucracy and struggle with dubious administrative processes. On the other hand the purchasing divisions of large retailers decide upon million dollar deals with their suppliers which may tempt manufacturers to pay bribes for winning the deal. While such forms of corruption may be found also for other businesses there are other practices which may be recognized as corruption which are typical in the retail sector. One of the most controversial discussions concerns the practice of so-called slotting fees which are charged to manufacturers as a contribution to the handling costs of the retailer. Since such fees are negotiated in secrecy and not broken down by categories of expenditure they are often seen as a bribery-like payment demanded for getting contracts or staying in business. In the following chapter we will analyze these practices from an economic perspective. We will provide some empirical findings on how such payments are assessed in practice and conclude with some ethical considerations concerning the practice and the effects of slotting fees.

A growing number of central banks are considering the issuance of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). CBDCs for the general public (“retail CBDCs”) would constitute a central bank liability and a form of digital cash. To the public, they would be an alternative to central bank issued cash and private money, such as traditional bank deposits. The evolution of payments plays a pivotal role in developing CBDCs. Given the declining role of cash in some jurisdictions, CBDCs as a new form of central bank money may contribute to safeguarding trust in the public currency and improve financial inclusion outcomes. CBDCs have the potential to encourage competition and efficiency in an otherwise oligopolistic market for payment services, increasingly dominated by BigTechs, and increase overall resilience in payment markets of the future. Upon their introduction and depending on their exact design, CBDCs may have considerable consequences for policy makers and the general public. This chapter sets out four of the main motivations for issuing CBDCs, all while acknowledging considerable divergences across jurisdictions.

The hefty fines levied on credit institutions in recent years for cases of misconduct, including poor behavioural standards, operational control deficiencies and regulatory breaches more broadly, has been defined by regulatory authorities and the financial sector more broadly as ‘conduct risk’. There is no official definition of conduct risk, as conduct risk profiles are unique to each firm and, therefore, there can never be a one-size-fits-all framework in place. Conceptually, conduct risk is a broad notion that touches every part of an enterprise framework, including culture, customer contact, corporate governance, ethics and integrity, conflicts of interest and compliance, amongst others. As a result, credit institutions tend to associate conduct risk with regulatory censure, financial detriment, poor customer outcomes, and, importantly, reputational damage. In light of the significant consequences of misconduct, recent regulatory measures have sought to specifically target these drivers. In this chapter the author discussed the regulatory spotlight on conduct risk, which continues to top the regulators’ agenda in view of its seriousness and considered the role of the board in managing conduct risk, whilst elaborating on the importance of board evaluations in this respect.

COVID-19 affected all global activities. The print media industry was one of the affected fields. This research investigates the challenges and opportunities that COVID-19 brought to the Ethiopian newspapers. Political Economy of Media theory is used to analyse data obtained from documents and in-depth interviews with managers of two leading media houses; the government-owned Ethiopian Press Agency (EPA) and the private Capital newspaper. The findings show that print media faced two key challenges. First, their circulation decreased due to the COVID-19 as a result of the economic recession. This was compounded by the second challenge, based on the fact that not only don’t these newspapers own printers, they also lack a established formal distribution infrastructure. As a result, they still had to pay highly for printing while selling copies at a reduced price. However, media hybridisation, innovative projects, and sponsored pages helped the newspapers stay on the market. This study recommends that newspaper publishers run their printing machines, expand the media technology, change the attitude of print journalists, and capacitate them to utilise media hybridisation as important solutions.

The existence of parallel imports (PI) raises a number of interesting policy and strategic questions, which are the subject of this survey article. For example, parallel trade is essentially arbitrage within policy-integrated markets of IPR-protected goods, which may have different prices across countries. Thus, we analyze fully two types of price differences that give rise to such arbitrage. First is simple retail-level trade in horizontal markets because consumer prices may differ. Second is the deeper, and more strategic, issue of vertical pricing within the common distribution organization of an original manufacturer selling its goods through wholesale distributors in different markets. This vertical price control problem presents the IPR-holding firm a menu of strategic choices regarding how to compete with PI. Another strategic question is how the existence of PI might affect incentives of IPR holders to invest in research and development (R&D). The global research-based pharmaceutical firms, for example, strongly oppose any relaxation of restrictions against PI of drugs into the United States, arguing that the potential reduction in profits would diminish their ability to innovate. There is a close linkage here with price controls for medicines, which are a key component of national health policies but can give rise to arbitrage through PI. We also discuss the complex economic relationships between PI and other forms of competition policy, or attempts to limit the abuse of market power offered by patents and copyrights. Finally, we review the emerging literature on how policies governing PI may affect international trade agreements.