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Consumers on the Canadian home front did not suffer extreme deprivation as a consequence of the Second World War. Price controls effectively combatted inflation and rationing was neither widespread nor unpopular where it did apply. Consequently, black markets were not a major feature of life in wartime Canada. However, at war's end limited black markets, especially in meat, emerged as consumer expectations outstripped supply. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article we develop and analyse novel datasets to retrace the persistence and scale of underground market activity in Maoist China. We show that, contrary to received wisdom, Chinese citizens continued to engage in market-based transactions long after "socialist transformation" was ostensibly complete, and that this activity constituted a substantial proportion of local economic output throughout the Maoist era. This helps to explain, in part, why, when markets were officially reopened in China, private economic activity took off. We arrive at these findings through the development and analysis of novel datasets based on unconventional historical sources – namely, a collection of 2,690 cases of "speculation and profiteering" that were recovered from flea markets in eastern China. We show how these grassroots sources can be systematically analysed and used, in lieu of official statistical aggregates, to develop new insights into the macro workings of the Maoist economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article theorizes and historicizes soap, a medical "gift" distributed by the US military to villages and hamlets in South Vietnam, as a commodity and as an infrastructure in the American war in Vietnam. During the war, soap not only operated as a tool to clean those the US military deemed dirty and uncivilized but also brokered the ideological movement of empire from the nation-state to the occupied regions of the Vietnamese South. Wartime US humanitarianism proffered soap as a counterinsurgent weapon of soft power and as an infrastructural poetic that securitized US empire against the rising tide of communist insurgency. Reading against the hegemonic archival practices that venerate the gifting of soap as benevolent militarism, the article moves to examine the anarchic practice of South Vietnamese black marketeering, which redeployed soap as an illegal market commodity to intercept the movement of US empire and, as a practice that arose in response to wartime capitalism and militarization, allowed natives to command new social relations at the cost of disrupting the Republic of Vietnam's flows of capital and the United States' ongoing war campaign. As an informal, opaque, and yet thriving infrastructure of its own, the black market fostered insurgent survival strategies that repurposed military supplies and gifts as versatile commodities, allowing even soap to escape its original containment as a civilizing agent and giving it new uses and meanings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Measuring and predicting compliance with tax obligations is an important but challenging task. Survey data from California smokers show that several forms of tax avoidance and evasion were common. The analysis shows that 43% of smokers avoided taxes by purchasing cigarettes from out‐of‐state sources in the past year, 15% admitted to evading taxes through cross‐border purchases, and 26% reported purchasing likely or certainly untaxed cigarettes in the state in the past month. Attitudinal factors related to tax morale explain much more of the variance in compliance rates than demographic or law‐and‐economics factors. The implications for policy are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past decade, the world has been contending with a growing set of challenges related to illicit traffic as advancements in technology, communications, and global integration facilitate the operation of black markets and greater organization of criminal activity. In this study, the dark web and associated dark net markets are introduced as an important context for scholars interested in international marketing. Furthermore, the scale, scope, and structure of the real-world drug trade is empirically analyzed as an example of the work possible within this dark world. The study concludes by highlighting key themes from the literature in international marketing scholarship and focuses on how they might be co-opted to contribute toward the understanding and countermarketing of illicit systems of exchange. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Black markets emerged at every corner in cities across Japan immediately after World War II. They spread rapidly due to the collapse in the distribution and rationing system. The government's weakened control resulted in tolerance of the markets and occasionally covert government collaboration with black marketeers. In addition, existence of easily accessible open spaces in cities, such as areas that had been cleared of buildings by forced evacuation prior to air raids or that had been left in ruins by the raids, provided the space for black marketeers to build their street stalls. The black markets supported postwar reconstruction. They also had decisive influence on the emergence of new urban structures in postwar Japan. This essay examines the persistence of earlier characteristics of urban space along with the new elements in postwar Japan's black markets. The new international character of the postwar black markets was evident in the prominence of repatriates from Japan's former colonies, along with Chinese and Korean residents in Japan. The black market was thus a symbolic point of convergence between the prewar Empire of Japan and the new postwar Japan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bellstat Junction and Sekko's Place are two markets in Cape Town established by migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers. They are perhaps better understood as black markets existing within a lineage of global black urbanisms, past and future. These sites occupy a slippery legality, sited in the peripheral margins and shadows of the central city of Cape Town. They operate across grammars of transaction and care. An architectural reading of black markets enables a drawing out and stitching together of the constituents of these sites: of site and story, of domesticity and infrastructure, of publicness and transnational networks. Adopting the term black markets for these sites calls attention to the racialization of these spaces, and their emergence as sites of possibility, precarity, and care in the face of protracted crises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In times of pandemics or natural catastrophes, prices of commodities, such as water, food and medicines, tend to shoot up, in response to a surge in demand and depleting supplies. The government, in its misguided efforts to maintain “price affordability”, imposes price controls and anti-price-gouging legislation and bans the reselling of food and medical supplies. These interventions in the free market are the exact opposite of what the government should do, if it wants to ensure that enough commodities go to people who need them, that people do not hoard all available goods on grocery shelves, and most importantly, that suppliers have the incentive to produce more goods to meet current and future demand at market prices.

• Rosewood is the most trafficked endangered plant species globally. • Despite several bans, illegal extraction and export of the African rosewood persist. • We draw theoretical insights from political ecology to examine the underlying drivers. • Transnational capital flows, hierarchical corruption and poverty are key drivers. • We illustrate how macro forces interact with local processes to shape illegal resource extraction. Rosewood is currently the most trafficked endangered plant species globally, with much of this illegal trade originating from Africa. To regulate rosewood extraction, many African countries have adopted centralized forest governance approaches. Following several partial bans, the government of Ghana placed a comprehensive ban on rosewood extraction in March 2019. Despite these bans, illegal extraction and export of rosewood continue to persist. Drawing theoretical insights from political ecology and based on empirical research in northern Ghana, we explore the drivers of the persistent illegal extraction of rosewood. Our findings reveal a complex mix of multiscalar processes including the rapid deployment of transnational capital into local agrarian communities by transnational rosewood dealers; selective enforcement of statutory bans; hierarchical corruption; and ecological and socioeconomic vulnerabilities as key drivers. These drivers are embedded in intricate processes of down-scaling and up-scaling among diverse actors. This study contributes to the literature on scale jumping in political ecology and demonstrates how global forces interact with local processes to shape environmental degradation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Informacion Comercial Espanola Revista de Economia is the property of S.G.E.E.I.P.C., Secretaria de Estado de Comercio, Ministerio de Industria, Comercio y Turismo and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Carta Económica Regional is the property of Universidad de Guadalajara and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

A proposal for addressing rhinoceros poaching is to legalise the trade in rhino horn and adopt a regulated market approach, overturning the current trade ban. This orthodox economic prescription aims to reduce incentives to poach endangered wildlife by driving down the market price of their products via auctioned stockpile releases. Biologists are clear, however, that securing a stockpile for some species needs biological success in captive breeding programmes (CBPs), which varies markedly across species and habitats. Rhinoceros herds in a CBP would need spatially extensive terrain and costly permanent security measures; this only appears feasible for the less aggressive 'white' rhino. We argue that the market price would actually need to be sustained at a high level to cover protection costs over the longer reproduction cycles in CBPs and that, without extensive monitoring and the correct institutional structures being in place, legalising trade may encourage, rather than prevent, poaching. Supplementary policy measures that differentiate among consumer groups would also likely prove necessary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Laws that prohibit, regulate, or tax cigarettes can generate illicit markets for tobacco products. Illicit markets both reduce the efficacy of policies intended to improve public health and create harms of their own. Enforcement can reduce evasion but creates additional harms, including incarceration and violence. There is strong evidence that more enforcement in illicit drug markets can spur violence. The presence of licit substitutes, such as electronic cigarettes, has the potential to greatly reduce the size of illicit markets. We present a model demonstrating why enforcement can increase revenues in the illicit market, show that states with higher tobacco taxes have larger illicit markets, and apply the findings to discussion of public policy toward a potential ban on menthol cigarettes. The social calculus involved in determining public policy toward tobacco cigarettes should include the harms from both consumption and control. We conclude by highlighting areas where more research is needed for effective policymaking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The syndemic of opioid addiction, HIV, hepatitis, tuberculosis, imprisonment, and overdose in Russia has been worsened by the illegality of opioid substitution therapy. As part of on-going serial studies, we sought to explore the influence of opioid availability on aspects of the syndemic as it has affected the city of St. Petersburg.Methods: We employed a sequential approach in which quantitative data collection and statistical analysis were followed by a qualitative phase. Quantitative data were obtained in 2013-2014 from a respondent-driven sample (RDS) of people who inject drugs (PWID). Individuals recruited by RDS were tested for antibodies to HIV and interviewed about drug use and injection practices, sociodemographics, health status, and access to medical care. Subsequently, we collected in-depth qualitative data on methadone use, knowledge, and market availability from PWID recruited at nine different locations within St. Petersburg.Results: Analysis of interview data from the sample revealed the percentage of PWID injecting methadone in the 30 days prior to interview increased from 3.6% in 2010 to 53.3% in 2012-2013. Injection of only methadone, as compared to injecting only heroin or both drugs, was associated with less frequent injection and reduced HIV-related injected risk, especially a lower rate of injecting with a previously used syringe. In-depth questioning of methadone injectors corroborated the finding from serial quantitative surveys of PWID that methadone's black market availability is a recent phenomenon. Spatial analysis revealed widespread methadone availability but no concentration in any specific districts of the city.Conclusion: Despite the prohibition of substitution therapy and demonization of methadone, the drug has emerged to rival heroin as the most commonly available opioid in St. Petersburg. Ironically, its use is associated with reduced injection-related HIV risk even when its use is illegal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By combining source material from both the military and civilian courts, this article seeks to broaden our view of soldiers’ criminality during the early modern period, especially in garrison towns. Earlier research has stressed soldiers’ propensity to violence and rowdiness. This article, however, highlights soldiers’activity in the urban black markets. The research focuses on mid- eighteenth century Helsinki, which became an important garrison town and naval base after the Russo-Swedish war (1741–1743), which had unfortunate consequences for Sweden. Thousands of soldiers from nearly all corners of Sweden were transported to the town to construct a new sea fortress, Sveaborg. Soldiers were paid badly and, consequently, they had to resort to illegal means, such as stealing and selling stolen goods, to support themselves and their families. Desertion was especially high among enlisted soldiers.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the Tausch- or barter-centers that existed in Germany during the 1940s. These small but unique platforms for the exchange of consumer durables represent an almost unknown chapter in economic history. This contribution aims to describe the major characteristics of these organizations and to investigate the implications of these findings for community currencies in general. Design/methodology/approach – An analysis is conducted of primary sources, which bring to light different types of these alternative markets. This is complemented by a comprehensive study of secondary sources. Findings – Theoretically, these exchange systems are interpreted as operating within boundaries. The results of this research project are not only relevant for our understanding of the war and post-war economy in Germany, at a time when the market mechanism was suppressed, this peculiar case also sheds some light on the functioning of markets. Furthermore, a better knowledge of the structure of the Tausch- or barter-centers is relevant with regard to our understanding of the functioning of community currencies in general. Originality/value – This paper provides the first survey of these organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presence of black markets is not common for every industry but is a unique phenomenon in the industries such as asset pooling and leasing services. The unique business models and the asset flows that we see in such industries are susceptible for such threats and reveals the nature and extent of extent of industry-specific threats. This paper employs agility lens (Overby et al. 2006; Roberts and Grover 2012) to understand how such firms could address the issue of black market threats with the help of network structure. Through a case study of a global asset pooling and leasing company, we reveal the criticality of network structures, the difficulties, inadequacies and impracticalities of current tracking technologies that challenge firms in minimizing such threats. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The textbook competitive model of drug markets predicts that greater law enforcement leads to higher black market prices, but also to the unintended consequences of greater revenue and violence. These predictions are not in accord with the paradoxical outcomes evinced by recent history in some drug markets, where enforcement rose even as prices fell. We show that predictions of the textbook model are not unequivocal, and that when bandwagon effects among scofflaws are introduced, the simple predictions are more likely to be reversed. We next show that even simple models of noncompetitive black markets can elicit paradoxical outcomes. Therefore, we argue that instead of searching for assumptions that lead to paradoxical outcomes, which is the direction the literature has taken, it is better for policy analysis to choose appropriate assumptions for the textbook model. We finish with performing such an analysis for the case of banning menthol cigarettes. Under the most plausible assumptions enforcement will indeed spur violence, although the legal availability of electronic cigarettes may mitigate or reverse this conclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Transformations in Business & Economics is the property of Vilnius University and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Highlights: [•] Multilocus phylogenetic study of Southeast Asian sailfin lizards. [•] Conservation genetic study of the genus Hydrosaurus. [•] Forensic analysis of Philippine black market pet trade. [•] The results reveal cryptic diversity and insufficient protected habitat. [•] We evaluate conservation threats and illegal pet trade in light of results. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The flow of illicit goods and services within the global economy has fostered various black markets around the world. Complex illicit supply chain structures have developed to help support this underground trade. These structures and supporting operations act as a key enabler in the functioning of black markets. Transnational smuggling is a critical component in illicit supply chains and is responsible for the movement of illegal goods from source origin to the markets where they are consumed. Smuggling is a logistics and transport intensive activity. There are unique transportation requirements for smuggling operations, based on mitigation of risk of being detected from customs and border controls. International smuggling employs novel operational methods, multiple transport modes, flexible transport routes, and transport asset types designed to conceal contraband, in order evade border security and law enforcement controls. Smuggling operations can be viewed as a core competence for transnational criminal organizations and as a means for expanding their portfolio of crimes. This paper analyzes the role of transnational smuggling operations in illicit supply chain structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: We provide a phylogenetic and population genetic evaluation of the illegal pet and bush meat trade of monitor lizards in the Philippines. We use a molecular dataset assembled from vouchered samples with known localities throughout the country, as a reference for statistical phylogenetic, population genetic, and DNA barcoding analyses of genetic material obtained during a three year survey of the Manila pet trade. Our results provide the first genetic evaluation of a major Southeast Asian city’s illegal trade in monitors and allow us to establish several important conclusions regarding actual, versus reported, origins of Manila’s black market Varanus. Monitor lizards are clearly transported throughout the archipelago for trade; we identified genotypes from areas surrounding Manila, the distinct Bicol faunal subregion of Luzon, Mindanao Island, the Visayan islands, islands of the Romblon Province, the Babuyan islands, and Mindoro Island. Numerous species are involved, including multiple endemic Philippine taxa, the threatened Gray’s monitor (Varanus olivaceus), and the presumably non-Philippine rough-neck monitor (Varanus rudicollis). Our results suggest that traders frequently and deliberately misrepresent the provenance of traded animals, in an apparent effort to increase their perceived market value. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

While the trade in human organs remains largely in the darkness as it is hardly reported, detected or scientifically researched, a range of key institutional stakeholders, professionals, policy-makers and scholars involved in this field show remarkable high levels of moral condemnation and share a rather unanimous prohibitionist line. Some have equated this phenomenon to genocide or talk about ‘neo-cannibalism’, others present it as dominated by mafias and rogue traders. However, organ trafficking takes very different shapes, each one with their own ethical dilemmas. Simplistic formulaic responses purely based in more criminalisation should be critically evaluated. Based on a qualitative study conducted on the demand for kidneys (transplant tourism) in and from the Netherlands, we present in this article some of the main empirical results and discuss their implications. But before doing that, this contribution briefly describes the global patterns of contemporary organ trade and the way the problem has been framed and constructed by international policy bodies, professional (transplant) organisations and some scholars. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that the rules that constitute a market protect autonomy and increase welfare in healthcare. Markets do the former through protecting rights to self-ownership and a cluster of rights that protect its exercise. Markets protect welfare by organizing and protecting trades. In contrast, prohibition destroys legitimate markets, giving rise to so-called black markets that harm both the autonomy and well-being of agents. For example, a fee-for-service medical system is a highly developed and specialized market. It is individuals working together, through the division of labor, to provide mutual insurance. This coordination, and the benefits it makes possible, is not possible without injunctions against harm. Prohibitions on harm are not mere ethical niceties, they are practice rules for both healthcare and markets. Placing the doctor within a healthcare market actually reinforces the doctor's moral obligation, and the legal enforcement of that obligation, not to harm. Similarly, markets reinforce patient rights to self-determination through legal and institutional enforcement of the harm principle in the form of the protection of certain basic welfare rights to life, bodily integrity, property, trade, and contract. Since the establishment of markets protects agent autonomy and welfare, and prohibition directly harms the same, there are strong reasons for establishing markets to protect trade in precisely those areas where autonomy and well-being are most vulnerable to exploitation, for example, the trade in human kidneys. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The threat of hackers and data thieves has increased, though few have considered the ways they dispose of the information obtained through computer attacks. This exploratory study examines the nature of the market for stolen data using a qualitative analysis of 300 threads from six web forums run by and for data thieves. The results suggest that all manner of personal and financial data can be obtained through these markets at a fraction of their true value. In addition, there are distinct relationships between buyers and sellers that shape the relationships and structure of these markets. Policy implications for law enforcement intervention are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To generate effective policy to reduce the proliferation of illicit small arms in developing countries, governments must understand how the weapons are distributed and illegal stockpiles formed. This paper describes the structural characteristics of small arms supply chains and models mechanisms delivering the weapons to illicit users. The paper draws on the experience of countries in Southeast Asia and the Pacific Melanesian states. By pointing to the structural complexity of small arms supply chains, it highlights challenges that multiple channels of supply pose for governments seeking to curb the flow of small arms into illicit stocks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]