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This paper aims to analyze the evolution of direct selling – a retail channel that successfully sold products ranging from cosmetics to radios to automobiles – to multilevel marketing (MLM), an industry now apparently heavily reliant on selling to itself. As the courts have found some MLM companies to be pyramid schemes, the analysis includes the overlap between the legal MLM model and an illegal pyramid scheme.

The development of direct selling in the USA was examined, followed by the factors contributing to the design and growth of the MLM model and its non-commission-based compensation structure. Then, the key legal decisions regarding illegal pyramid schemes operating under the guise of MLM, the relative stagnation of direct selling and the state of the MLM industry were examined.

As the MLM model operates on the dual premise of retailing through a network of distributors and recruiting new distributors to do the same, it was found that federal regulators and the courts consistently focus on the “retail question” – the existence and extent of sales to consumers external to the distributor network. The authors argue that without a significant external customer base, internal consumption by an ever-churning base of participants resembles neither employee purchases nor a buying club.

As the MLM model facilitated the growth of pyramid scheme fraud, creating victims rather than customers, this research highlights successful efforts to regulate this type of consumer fraud.

Few papers have been written on MLM and pyramids schemes, and none thus far has taken an historical perspective.

This paper aims to empirically identify factors that increase consumer vulnerability to pyramid scheme fraud and compares/contrasts dynamics and implications of pyramid and Ponzi fraud.

Statistical techniques, including multiple regression, are used to analyze participant data (with over half a million individuals) from a now-defunct US-based pyramid scheme, Fortune Hi-Tech Marketing.

Findings suggest that this pyramid scheme flourished in counties with identifiable affinity groups: religious communities, Hispanic populations and certain age cohorts (e.g. recently retired). Recruitment success varied significantly between geographic regions, with the highest levels of recruitment in the South. While prior research finds a possible positive relationship between education and Ponzi participation, this is not the case in the pyramid scheme studied. Furthermore, while Ponzi schemes might be pro-cyclical, collapsing during contractions when participants seek to extract their money, this pyramid scheme exhibited counter-cyclical behavior.

State and federal regulators, as well as consumer protection advocates, should learn from analysis of past pyramid scheme cases. Such analysis informs allocation of scarce resources and supports the case for targeted, active education. Clarifying differences between Ponzi and pyramid fraud helps to support clear and effective intervention.

This is the first research to analyze national participant-level data from a pyramid scheme to inform future action. While it confirms some past findings, such as the connection to affinity fraud, it adds to collective knowledge on pyramid schemes and the differences between pyramid and Ponzi fraud.

The Bureau of Economics in the Federal Trade Commission has a three-part role in the Agency and the strength of its functions changed over time depending on the preferences and ideology of the FTC’s leaders, developments in the field of economics, and the tenor of the times. The over-riding current role is to provide well considered, unbiased economic advice regarding antitrust and consumer protection law enforcement cases to the legal staff and the Commission. The second role, which long ago was primary, is to provide reports on investigations of various industries to the public and public officials. This role was more recently called research or “policy R&D”. A third role is to advocate for competition and markets both domestically and internationally. As a practical matter, the provision of economic advice to the FTC and to the legal staff has required that the economists wear “two hats,” helping the legal staff investigate cases and provide evidence to support law enforcement cases while also providing advice to the legal bureaus and to the Commission on which cases to pursue (thus providing “a second set of eyes” to evaluate cases). There is sometimes a tension in those functions because building a case is not the same as evaluating a case. Economists and the Bureau of Economics have provided such services to the FTC for over 100 years proving that a sub-organization can survive while playing roles that sometimes conflict. Such a life is not, however, always easy or fun.

This bibliography is offered as a practical guide to published papers, conference proceedings papers and theses/dissertations on the finite element (FE) and boundary element (BE) applications in different fields of biomechanics between 1976 and 1991. The aim of this paper is to help the users of FE and BE techniques to get better value from a large collection of papers on the subjects. Categories in biomechanics included in this survey are: orthopaedic mechanics, dental mechanics, cardiovascular mechanics, soft tissue mechanics, biological flow, impact injury, and other fields of applications. More than 900 references are listed.

The paper seeks to outline an approach to a unified framework for understanding the concept of “information” in the physical, biological and human domains, and to see what links and interactions may be found between them. It also aims to re‐examine the information science discipline, with a view to locating it in a larger context, so as to reflect on the possibility that information science may not only draw from these other disciplines, but that its insights may contribute to them.

The paper takes the form of an extensive literature review and analysis, loosely based on the approaches of Stonier, Madden and Bates, and including analysis of both scientific and library/information literature.

The paper identifies the concept of information as being identified with organised complexity in the physical domain, with meaning in context in the biological domain, and with Kvanvig's concept of understanding in the human domain. The linking thread is laws of emergent self‐organised complexity, applicable in all domains. Argues that a unified perspective for the information sciences, based on Popperian ontology, may be derived, with the possibility of not merely drawing insights from physical and biological science, but also of contributing to them. Based on Hirst's educational philosophy, derives a definition for the information sciences around two poles: information science and library/information management.

This is the only paper to approach the subject in this way.

This research was planned and applied as a descriptive study in order to determine the knowledge, attitudes and behaviors about testicular cancer (TC) and testicular self-examination (TSE) of male students who receiving health education.

This descriptive and cross-sectional study was conducted between May and August 2019 with male students. Early diagnosis of TC is quite important in terms of prognosis of the disease. The data were collected by using the questionnaire prepared by the researchers in accordance with the literature and the Turkish version of health belief model scale (HBMS) for TSE. The data were analyzed by number, percentage, mean and standard deviation and t test.

TSE HBMS, it was observed that the mean score of susceptibility subscale was 11.23 ± 3.73, the mean score of seriousness subscale was 28.20 ± 7.66, the mean score of benefit subscale was 21.57 ± 5.90, the mean score of the barriers subscale was 22.74 ± 5.16, the mean score of self-efficacy subscale was 9.91 ± 3.13 and the mean score of the health motivation subscale was 8.92 ± 2.84.

There was a statistically significant relationship between having heard of TC and health motivation (p < 0.05). There was a statistically significant relationship between the knowledge of TC and self-efficacy and health motivation (p < 0.05). There was a significant relationship between self-efficacy and TSE performing status (p < 0.05). There was also a significant relationship between the desire to obtain information about TSE and seriousness, barriers, self-efficacy and health motivation (p < 0.05). It was determined that majority of university students did not have any information about TC and TSE.