scholarly journals A Different Path to the Same Old Question: Why Should Cartels be Criminalised?

2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 141-176
Author(s):  
Nuno Castro Marques

Regardless of the extreme negative qualifications usually attributed to cartels and bid rigging, EU and Portuguese competition laws do not set them apart from other anticompetitive practices regarding the possible applicable sanctions. EU and Portuguese competition laws establish the same potential sanctions for all competition infringements. Despite that, there are clear indications that EU and Portuguese legislators intend to treat cartels differently from all other competition infringements. Despite that, there are clear indications that EU and Portuguese legislators intend to treat cartels differently from all other competition infringements, but those differences have essentially to do with rules or procedures designed to facilitate their detection, production of evidence and decision-making. Notwithstanding the relevance of the “traditional” arguments regarding cartel criminalization, we consider that the discussion is still incomplete and would benefit from the inclusion of an additional “filter”. As it is a discussion about a criminalization process, the use of common instruments in criminology can shed more light into the question, and one of those instruments – or the most important one – is the analysis of the legal interests protected by the norm. We deem it essential to think about what legal interests are harmed in each of the different types of competition infringements, so as to conclude if indeed and to what extent cartels and bid rigging are capable of impairing more or different legal interests, or in a different intensity, than those potentially violated by other types of competition infringements. The conclusion is that cartel and bid rigging conducts always infringe the entire set of legal interests that is or may be defended by competition laws and always do so with high intensity.

2011 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 121-123
Author(s):  
Jeri A. Logemann

Evidence-based practice requires astute clinicians to blend our best clinical judgment with the best available external evidence and the patient's own values and expectations. Sometimes, we value one more than another during clinical decision-making, though it is never wise to do so, and sometimes other factors that we are unaware of produce unanticipated clinical outcomes. Sometimes, we feel very strongly about one clinical method or another, and hopefully that belief is founded in evidence. Some beliefs, however, are not founded in evidence. The sound use of evidence is the best way to navigate the debates within our field of practice.


2017 ◽  
Vol 76 (3) ◽  
pp. 107-116 ◽  
Author(s):  
Klea Faniko ◽  
Till Burckhardt ◽  
Oriane Sarrasin ◽  
Fabio Lorenzi-Cioldi ◽  
Siri Øyslebø Sørensen ◽  
...  

Abstract. Two studies carried out among Albanian public-sector employees examined the impact of different types of affirmative action policies (AAPs) on (counter)stereotypical perceptions of women in decision-making positions. Study 1 (N = 178) revealed that participants – especially women – perceived women in decision-making positions as more masculine (i.e., agentic) than feminine (i.e., communal). Study 2 (N = 239) showed that different types of AA had different effects on the attribution of gender stereotypes to AAP beneficiaries: Women benefiting from a quota policy were perceived as being more communal than agentic, while those benefiting from weak preferential treatment were perceived as being more agentic than communal. Furthermore, we examined how the belief that AAPs threaten men’s access to decision-making positions influenced the attribution of these traits to AAP beneficiaries. The results showed that men who reported high levels of perceived threat, as compared to men who reported low levels of perceived threat, attributed more communal than agentic traits to the beneficiaries of quotas. These findings suggest that AAPs may have created a backlash against its beneficiaries by emphasizing gender-stereotypical or counterstereotypical traits. Thus, the framing of AAPs, for instance, as a matter of enhancing organizational performance, in the process of policy making and implementation, may be a crucial tool to countering potential backlash.


Author(s):  
Konrad RÓŻOWICZ

Aim: In the practice of awarding public contracts, sometimes the behavior of market actors, instead of competing with other entities, are aimed at illegal cooperation, including bid rigging. The above shows that healthy competition is not possible without efficient market control. In public procurement market this control is, primarily, carried out by public procurement entities: the President of the Public Procurement Office (Prezes UZP) and the National Appeal Chamber (KIO), and furthermore by President od the Office of Competition (Prezes UOKiK) and Consumer Protection and the Court od Competition and Consumer Protection. and Consumer Protection (SOKiK). The interesting issue is how the activities of the President of Office of Competition and Consumer Protection targeted  to contend with bid rigging affects on the activities of President of the Public Procurement Office (Prezes UZP) or the National Appeal Chamber (KIO). Design / Research methods: analysis and comparison decisions/ judgment issued by the President of the Public Procurement Office, National Appeal Chamber, the President of  the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection and the Court of Competition and Consumer Protection. Conclusions: The analysis has shown that the existence of specificities in the activities of the decision-making bodies and the judgments examined. However, in keeping with the specificity of the forms and objectives of control, these entities should cooperate, to a greater extent than before. Expanding the scope of cooperation would make it possible to better contend with bid rigging without changing the competition protection model. The introduction of institutionalized instruments for cooperation between the authorities seems to be valuable in terms of system solutions. Value of the article: The main value of the article is the comparison of selectively selected decisions and judgments representative of the problem under consideration and their comparative analysis in order to achieve the research objectives. The article deals with issues relevant to both public procurement practitioners and the state bodies dealing with procurement matters.


2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (5) ◽  
pp. 884-892
Author(s):  
Sartaj Ahmad ◽  
Ashutosh Gupta ◽  
Neeraj Kumar Gupta

Background: In recent time, people love online shopping but before any shopping feedbacks or reviews always required. These feedbacks help customers in decision making for buying any product or availing any service. In the country like India this trend of online shopping is increasing very rapidly because awareness and the use of internet which is increasing day by day. As result numbers of customers and their feedbacks are also increasing. It is creating a problem that how to read all reviews manually. So there should be some computerized mechanism that provides customers a summary without spending time in reading feedbacks. Besides big number of reviews another problem is that reviews are not structured. Objective: In this paper, we try to design, implement and compare two algorithms with manual approach for the crossed domain Product’s reviews. Methods: Lexicon based model is used and different types of reviews are tested and analyzed to check the performance of these algorithms. Results: Algorithm based on opinions and feature based opinions are designed, implemented, applied and compared with the manual results and it is found that algorithm # 2 is performing better than algorithm # 1 and near to manual results. Conclusion: Algorithm # 2 is found better on the different product’s reviews and still to be applied on other product’s reviews to enhance its scope. Finally, it will be helpful to automate existing manual process.


2021 ◽  
pp. 232949652110288
Author(s):  
Meaghan Stiman

In theory, participatory democracies are thought to empower citizens in local decision-making processes. However, in practice, community voice is rarely representative, and even in cases of equal representation, citizens are often disempowered through bureaucratic processes. Drawing on the case of a firearm discharge debate from a rural county’s municipal meetings in Virginia, I extend research about how power operates in participatory settings. Partisan political ideology fueled the debate amongst constituents in expected ways, wherein citizens engaged collectivist and individualist frames to sway the county municipal board ( Celinska 2007 ). However, it was a third frame that ultimately explains the ordinance’s repeal: the bureaucratic frame, an ideological orientation to participatory processes that defers decision-making to disembodied abstract rules and procedures. This frame derives its power from its depoliticization potential, allowing bureaucrats to evade contentious political debates. Whoever is best able to wield this frame not only depoliticizes the debate to gain rationalized legitimacy but can do so in such a way to favor a partisan agenda. This study advances gun research and participatory democracy research by analyzing how the bureaucratic frame, which veils partisanship, offers an alternative political possibility for elected officials, community leaders, and citizens to adjudicate partisan debates.


Axioms ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 145
Author(s):  
Yun Jin ◽  
Zareena Kousar ◽  
Kifayat Ullah ◽  
Tahir Mahmood ◽  
Nimet Yapici Pehlivan ◽  
...  

Interval-valued T-spherical fuzzy set (IVTSFS) handles uncertain and vague information by discussing their membership degree (MD), abstinence degree (AD), non-membership degree (NMD), and refusal degree (RD). MD, AD, NMD, and RD are defined in terms of closed subintervals of that reduce information loss compared to the T-spherical fuzzy set (TSFS), which takes crisp values from intervals; hence, some information may be lost. The purpose of this manuscript is to develop some Hamacher aggregation operators (HAOs) in the environment of IVTSFSs. To do so, some Hamacher operational laws based on Hamacher t-norms (HTNs) and Hamacher t-conorms (HTCNs) are introduced. Using Hamacher operational laws, we develop some aggregation operators (AOs), including an interval-valued T-spherical fuzzy Hamacher (IVTSFH) weighted averaging (IVTSFHWA) operator, an IVTSFH-ordered weighted averaging (IVTSFHOWA) operator, an IVTSFH hybrid averaging (IVTSFHHA) operator, an IVTSFH-weighted geometric (IVTSFHWG) operator, an IVTSFH-ordered weighted geometric (IVTSFHOWG) operator, and an IVTSFH hybrid geometric (IVTSFHHG) operator. The validation of the newly developed HAOs is investigated, and their basic properties are examined. In view of some restrictions, the generalization and proposed HAOs are shown, and a multi-attribute decision-making (MADM) procedure is explored based on the HAOs, which are further exemplified. Finally, a comparative analysis of the proposed work is also discussed with previous literature to show the superiority of our work.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Muhammad Shabir ◽  
Rimsha Mushtaq ◽  
Munazza Naz

In this paper, we focus on two main objectives. Firstly, we define some binary and unary operations on N-soft sets and study their algebraic properties. In unary operations, three different types of complements are studied. We prove De Morgan’s laws concerning top complements and for bottom complements for N-soft sets where N is fixed and provide a counterexample to show that De Morgan’s laws do not hold if we take different N. Then, we study different collections of N-soft sets which become idempotent commutative monoids and consequently show, that, these monoids give rise to hemirings of N-soft sets. Some of these hemirings are turned out as lattices. Finally, we show that the collection of all N-soft sets with full parameter set E and collection of all N-soft sets with parameter subset A are Stone Algebras. The second objective is to integrate the well-known technique of TOPSIS and N-soft set-based mathematical models from the real world. We discuss a hybrid model of multi-criteria decision-making combining the TOPSIS and N-soft sets and present an algorithm with implementation on the selection of the best model of laptop.


Processes ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (8) ◽  
pp. 1271
Author(s):  
Humberto. J. Prado-Galiñanes ◽  
Rosario Domingo

Industries are nowadays not only expected to produce goods and provide services, but also to do this sustainably. What qualifies a company as sustainable implies that its activities must be defined according to the social and ecological responsibilities that are meant to protect the society and the environment in which they operate. From now on, it will be necessary to consider and measure the impact of industrial activities on the environment, and to do so, one key parameter is the carbon footprint. This paper demonstrates the utility of the LCI as a tool for immediate application in industries. Its application shall facilitate decision making in industries while choosing amongst different scenarios to industrialize a certain product with the lowest environmental impact possible. To achieve this, the carbon footprint of a given product was calculated by applying the LCI method to several scenarios that differed from each other only in the supply-chain model. As a result of this LCI calculation, the impact of the globalization of a good’s production was quantified not only financially, but also environmentally. Finally, it was concluded that the LCI/LCA methodology can be considered as a fundamental factor in the new decision-making strategy that sustainable companies must implement while deciding on the business and industrial plan for their new products and services.


2001 ◽  
Vol 101 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-31 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerard Goggin ◽  
Catherine Griff

Much of the present debate about content on the internet revolves around how to control the distribution of different sorts of harmful or undesirable material. Yet there are considerable issues about whether sufficient sorts of desired cultural content will be available, such as ‘national’, ‘Australian’ content. In traditional broadcasting, regulation has been devised to encourage or mandate different types of content, where it is believed that the market will not do so by itself. At present, such regulatory arrangements are under threat in television, as the Productivity Commission Broadcasting Inquiry final report has noted. But what of the future for certain types of content on the internet? Do we need specific regulation and policy to promote the availability of content on the internet? Or is such a project simply irrelevant in the context of gradual but inexorable media convergence? Is regulating for content just as quixotic and fraught with peril as regulating of content from a censorship perspective often appears to be? In this article, we consider the case of Australian content for broadband technologies, especially in relation to film and video, and make some preliminary observations on the promotion and regulation of internet content.


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