"The unfettered marketplace, in which uncertainty rules and the admonition caveat emptor ('let the buyer beware') dictates each consumer decision, has today virtually disappeared. Consumers have become the focus of intensive economic policymaking designed to protect them from the risks and disappointments of the market. . . . Today, arguably no other economic actor in the advanced industrial countries not the investor, not the worker, not the welfare recipient enjoys a more thorough set of legal and institutional protections than the modern consumer when he or she enters the corner store."...
"The unfettered marketplace, in which uncertainty rules and the admonition caveat emptor ('let the buyer beware') dictates each consumer decision, has...
In the early 1990s, French officials viewed with some concern the emerging and innovative high-technology sectors of the U.S. and British marketplace. Fearful of falling too far behind, the French government implemented a vast array of policiesfrom tax incentives for investing in risky high-tech start-ups to new standards for electronic signaturesdesigned to promote the commercialization of new economy technologies in France. The efforts have turned French innovation policy on its head. Traditional government and bank-financed research and development were replaced by private venture...
In the early 1990s, French officials viewed with some concern the emerging and innovative high-technology sectors of the U.S. and British marketpla...
Many consumers feel powerless in the face of big industry's interests. And the dominant view of economic regulators (influenced by Mancur Olson's book The Logic of Collective Action, published in 1965) agrees with them. According to this view, diffuse interests like those of consumers are too difficult to organize and too weak to influence public policy, which is determined by the concentrated interests of industrial-strength players. Gunnar Trumbull makes the case that this view represents a misreading of both the historical record and the core logic of interest representation....
Many consumers feel powerless in the face of big industry's interests. And the dominant view of economic regulators (influenced by Mancur Olson's b...
Why did America embrace consumer credit over the course of the twentieth century, when most other countries did not? How did American policy makers by the late twentieth century come to believe that more credit would make even poor families better off? This book traces the historical emergence of modern consumer lending in America and France. If Americans were profligate in their borrowing, the French were correspondingly frugal. Comparison of the two countries reveals that America's love affair with credit was not primarily the consequence of its culture of consumption, as many writers have...
Why did America embrace consumer credit over the course of the twentieth century, when most other countries did not? How did American policy makers by...
