The certification of products is not new. However, the past few years have seen an upsurge in consumer demand for much more information about the provenance, authenticity, and performance of products and services, going well beyond authenticity, safety and reliability. Alongside this rise there has been a proliferation of voluntary certification schemes instituted by various combinations of industry associations, nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) and government or quasi-governmental agencies.
The seminar series is designed as the first step of a project to compare newly emerging third...
Dr Alex Nicholls (Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship) examines how over the past ten years the market for Fair Trade products has grown at double digit rates across many countries in the North. As a consequence, Fair Trade is today the most significant example of a social enterprise...
Published 12/08/10
Professor Timothy Sinclair (University of Warwick) looks at why getting credit ratings 'right' seems vitally important to many professional observers and politicians. The increasingly volatile nature of markets in a post-Bretton Woods world of international capital mobility has created a crisis...
Published 12/01/10