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This paper analyzes whether ideology-driven firms doing business based on ethical principles such as those envisioned by fair trade can survive in the market when competition increases. By formally evaluating the development of fair trade over time, we show that such firms cannot continue to exist with full compliance with ethical standards about fairness. We conceptualize fairness as wealth transfers to small local producers in developing countries and apply a Hotelling-model of horizontal competition in fairness. Results show that increasing the scale and scope of fair trade products in the market implies that concessions on fairness are needed to survive intensified competition. Ideology-driven fair trade firms will survive only if they differentiate. In the end, paradoxically, wealth transfers by ideology-driven firms can be upheld only by focusing on other attributes than fairness to attract consumers. Only then can ideology-driven firms maintain ethical standards in a market environment, while alleviating pressure on total wealth transfers to local producers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on early sociological analyses of how power and intergroup conflicts can affect the development of modern economies, this paper investigates how the recent Global Crisis (GC) has affected the stratification of the US society. The paper argues that the consumerist society has reinforced the historical stratification of social identities with white men in high-paid, high-social status managerial and financial occupations at the top, and black women in low-paid, low-status service occupations at the bottom. This paper calls for a deconstruction of the neoliberal individual into a unique combination of identities in a stratified capitalist society in order to reveal how social stratification has evolved during the GC. The paper finally concludes on the importance of heterogeneous identities in reflecting the diversity of societal and economic interests in order to address the issues of financial stability and sustainability at the corporate and societal levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the impact of the rise of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and social entrepreneurs on economic development, with a special focus on how they have been used in Africa. The paper describes the decline of the state and the rise of NGOs as a force in economic development under neoliberalism. We then turn to two of the major problems with the roll-back of the state in Africa: the inherent weaknesses of nonstate actors in the development process, and the significant cost that is incurred by undermining the role of state. The paper concludes by suggesting the necessity of reinserting the state as the major vehicle for economic development, albeit in productive partnership with NGOs and social entrepreneurs. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper carries out an analysis of the formation and transformation of social relations and networks of access to resources in the professional trajectory of micro-entrepreneurs operating in an urban informal African economy. The analysis of social networks is rooted in Granovetter's structural embeddedness framework combined with the dynamic and discursive conception of social relations of Harisson White (embeddedness and decoupling). Life stories of micro and small entrepreneurs in Bobo-Dioulasso (Burkina-Faso) are analyzed by mixing qualitative and quantitative methods. Results suggest that the construction of social networks and interpersonal relations of access to resources is a long-term process. A co-construction of social networks and economic activity is observed; it challenges the argument that social capital is a substitute for a lack of personal resources. The growth of small and micro activities is linked to the professionalization and stabilization of a social network, and even to the institutionalization of access to resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2015 UN Paris Agreement reinforced and declared compatible the two goals of avoiding dire climate change and maintaining global economic growth, and it specified that technological innovation is ‘critical’ to this joint achievement. Unfortunately, any confidence that near-term global economic growth is consistent with a stabilized climate is severely undermined by empirical evidence. Despite the rapid increase of alternative energies in recent decades, global GDP growth continues to require burning greater quantities of climate-destabilizing fossil fuels. The dim outlook for sufficiently reducing CO2while maintaining economic growth is underscored by global data and Germany specific data on the decoupling of GDP from CO2. This paper summarizes pertinent climate science, substantiates the dependence of economic growth on fossil fuels, and uses the Kaya identity to demonstrate the unfavorable prospects for reducing CO2while maintaining GDP growth. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]