Pricing strategy and product quality design with platform-investment

<p style='text-indent:20px;'>With the development of business, more consumers are quality sensitive and improving the product quality becomes particularly important. We mainly discuss two investment strategies: retailer-investment and platform-investment. Compared with non-investment case, only if consumer sensitivity is not too high, it is profitable for the retailer to select retailer-investment. When both retailer-investment and platform-investment are viable, the choice of investment mechanism depends on the profit-sharing ratio. Particularly, if the ratio is within a certain range, the optimal investment strategy is platform-investment, achieving a triple-win outcome. Besides, to effectively alleviate the contradiction between the retailer's moral hazard problem and the sustainable value-added effect of platform-investment, we further research the contract term. These results give us some meaningful management inspirations in investment mechanism.</p>

Punovažnost valutne klauzule nakon stupanja na snagu Zakona o konverziji

This paper deals with legality of the currency clause in light of the Law on Conversion of Housing Loans Indexed in Swiss Francs. The first part analyses characteristics of the currency clause, in order to explain effects of its possible illegality on validity of the loan agreement. The author emphasizes inconsistency in the way Serbian courts approach this issue and suggests arguments for treating the loan agreement as being only partially invalid. The second part presents different opinions regarding legality of the Swiss francs currency clause, which is generally treated as an invalid contract term in judicial practice. Thereafter, solutions to the problem of Swiss francs in the Law are examined. It is concluded that conversion is not possible if the original loan agreement was invalid due to an illegal currency clause. Consequently, illegality of the currency clause remains open after entry into force of the said Law.

A Theory of Vicarious Liability

This article proposes a theory' of vicarious liability which attempts to explain the central features and limitations of the doctrine. The main premise of the article is that the common law should continue to impose vicarious liability because it can co-exist with the current tort law regime that imposes liability for fault. The author lays out the central features of the doctrine of vicarious liability and examines why the leading rationales (such as control, compensation, deterrence, loss-spreading, enterprise liability and mixed policy) fail to explain or account for its doctrinal rules. The author offers an indemnity theory for vicarious liability and examines why the current rules of vicarious liability are limited in application to employer-employee relationships and do not extend further. It is proposed that the solution to the puzzle of vicarious liability rests within the contractual relationship between employer-employee and not the relationship between the employer and the tort victim. The proposed indemnity theory implies a contract term that indemnifies the employee for harms suffered in the course of his or her employment. Vicarious liability then follows from an application of the contractual concepts of subrogation and indemnity to the particular relationship between employee, employer and tort victim. Finally, the article discusses and attempts to resolve the possible criticisms that may follow the indemnity theory, including concerns that it is in conflict with leading decisions, including Lister v. Romford. Bazley v. Curry and Morgans v. Launchbury.

Depriving the Debtor’s Essential Obligation of its Substance and its Remedies under the Provisions of Article 1170 of the French Civil Code

In 1994 and thereafter, the French judiciary set a trend by utilizing the causation theory to revoke the exemption clauses of liability that constitute a violation of the contract&rsquo;s essential obligations. This utilization was intended to restore economic equilibrium to the contract, in order to achieve the benefit each party seeks from concluding a contract. However, in 2016, the new amendments of the French civil code -which were issued by decree no: 131-2016- abolished the causation theory in general. Nevertheless, they retained the previous French judicial trend based on causation theory, where Article 1170 of the new amendments states clearly &ldquo;any contract term which deprives a debtor&rsquo;s essential obligation of its substance is deemed not written&rdquo;. However, Article 1170 of the new amendments did not specify what is meant by an essential obligation? When does the contract&rsquo;s term result in depriving the debtor&rsquo;s essential obligation of its substance? Moreover, Article 1170 consolidates an individual penalty which may cause many legal problems. These problems are: the matter concerns an essential clause in the contract and not a secondary one, the other clauses of the contract remain valid as they have been, without any modifications or replacements and, in some cases, abolishing the clause itself might lead to further imbalance in the contract. Therefore, the legal provisions of Article 1170 should be analyzed in an analytical approach along with the previous French judicial trend with respect to these provisions. As a result, the research illustrates the urgent need to amend Article 1170 of the new amendments, in order to contribute to the stability of the economic contractual equilibrium.

Disclosure duties in German insurance contract law

This paper analyses disclosure duties in insurance contract law in Germany on the basis of questions developed in preparation of the World Congress of the International Insurance Law Association (AIDA) 2018. As risk factors are within the policyholder’s sphere of knowledge, the insurer naturally depends on gaining such knowledge from its policyholder in order to calculate and evaluate premium and risk. Legal approaches as to how the insurer may obtain relevant information and the legal consequences differ in national insurance contract laws around the globe. Taking part in this legal comparison, the paper describes the key elements of such a mechanism from a German perspective and comprises both duties of the policyholder and duties of the insurer. As for the policyholder, these issues are differences between a duty to (spontaneously) disclose and a duty not to misrepresent as a reaction to questions of the insurer, the prerequisites and remedies of such duty, the subjective standard of the disclosure duty and a duty to notify material changes during the contract term. On the other hand, the paper also addresses an insurer’s duty to investigate, a duty to ascertain the policyholder’s understanding of the policy and a duty to inform during the contract term or after the occurrence of an insured event. In doing so, the paper offers a comprehensive and critical overview on the transfer of knowledge in the insurance (pre-)contractual relationship.

Unfair Contract Terms Protection in Slovakia

The unfair contract terms protection in Slovakia is currently regulated by a system of rules in the Slovak Civil Code; the path to the current extent of consumer protection has not been very straightforward. This article analyses the legislative framework on unfair terms, and questions of law enforcement. It further outlines selected issues and empirical evidence in the context of “surprising contract terms,” transparency of a contract term, legislative power of the judiciary, it discusses the controversial of the German approach to resolve conflicts revolving around unfair clauses. The article concludes that the current Slovak regulation of unfair terms in consumer contracts seems to fulfil the requirements set by the UCTD; however, all in all, Slovakia’s national regulation remains fragmented in the Civil Code, the Act on Consumer Protection and special sectoral regulation and supplemented by special procedural regulation.

Paušalna naknada troškova naplate u poslovnim transakcijama

The Financial Operations and Pre-Bankruptcy Settlement Act of 2012 (ZFPPN) has introduced into Croatian law “a special compensation for the creditor's recovery costs incurred due to debtor's late payment in commercial transactions”, as a new legal consequence of late payment. The statutory amount of this lump sum compensation for recovery costs is prescribed in the Art. 13 (1) of the ZFPPN, which provides that the creditor of a monetary obligation is entitled to a lump sum compensation in Croatian kunas in the amount equivalent of 40 €. The paper discusses the permissibility of a contract term setting out an amount of compensation different than the one prescribed by the Art. 13 (1) of the ZFPPN, and the relationship between the creditor's claim for payment of the lump sum compensation and his claim for compensation of damages incurred due to the debtor's late payment.

Pricing a Lease Contract in Presence of Late Payment Extra-Charges

Partial insolvency in leasing contracts may entail to afford additional late payment costs. In this paper we focus on the case that the lessee makes partial payments in due time and settles the debt augumented by the late payment interests later. The presence of the extra-costs drives the lease Effective Annual interest Rate (EAR) to deviate from the lease contract rate. The aim of this work is to illustrate how design the contract payback amortization to stick EAR to the lease contract rate, when the lease contract rate, the late payment rate and the contract term are exogeneously fixed. First we achieve a proxy for EAR given by the lease contract rate plus an extra-charge rate addendum. We show that this latter addendum is sensitive to the payback Macaulay Duration, a weighted size and timing average. Specifically, the longer the Macaulay Duration, the smaller the extra-charge rate addendum. As a consequence, two general rules to drive EAR close to the lease contract rate roll out, specifically: (1) the payment pattern should be set with a long Macaulay Duration; and (2) the surrender value of the leased good should be put large. As the contract settlement is given, we show that EAR is delimited by a lower bound and an upper bound. Then the payback amortizations with fixed instalments are studied. To get insight on the importance of EAR inputs we roll sensitivity analysis out through illustrative applications. The results of the paper are useful to provide policymakers a better knowledge about the effects on EAR of the contract conditions on the pattern of payments.

Private Participation in Infrastructure: The Nigerian Experience

The participation of the private sector in the provision of infrastructure is now a fundamental element of discourse around state modernization especially in the face of fiscal crisis. This paper examines the dialogue against the backdrop of the impression that the concept is new as a tool of fiscal management as well as its adoption in the emerging economies using Nigeria as a reference point. The study traced the evolution, theoretical foundation and history of public private partnership in Nigeria. Our findings reveal that though the adoption of PPP has been positive, it has some challenges, which are as a result of contract term agreement, political influence and the need for renegotiation as a result of increasing cost and those conditions are not envisaged at the time of contracting.