Gray Market Research Articles

In What Measure Is Public Finance Sustainability Threatened by Illicit Tobacco Trade: The Case of Western Balkan Countries

The aim of this paper is to gain new knowledge about illicit tobacco trade in Western Balkan countries and its effects on public finance sustainability. It includes an estimation of the volume of illicit tobacco trade, identifying and quantifying the key factors that cause illegal tobacco trade, the effects of illegal tobacco trade on public finance sustainability, and the effects on the intensity of total tobacco trade. An empirical analysis was conducted using the data collected by field research on consumer preferences in tobacco products in Western Balkan countries (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Slovenia). The reference research period is the year 2018. The results obtained show a high variability of volume of illicit tobacco trade in Western Balkan countries. While more than 20% of tobacco products in Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina are bought on the gray market, a share of illicit tobacco trade lower than 5% is found in Slovenia and Macedonia. Underdeveloped institutional framework fighting against illicit trade and weak rule of law, coupled with the heavy taxation of tobacco products, are the key factors behind a higher intensity of illicit trade in comparison to more developed European Union (EU) economies. Illicit tobacco trade negatively affects the stability of public finance of Western Balkan economies and reduces the level of public service. It is especially important for the health system combating the negative consequences of smoking. Regular and illicit tobacco trade amongst Western Balkan countries is found to flow in opposite directions.

Green Saharas, Grey Markets: Commercial Exploitation of North African Prehistory, an Overview

The collection-driven destruction of the archaeological record by artefact hunters not only threatens to obliterate part of the world’s cultural heritage, but also profoundly affects our ability to understand the human past of the region. This text takes a preliminary look at the material and archaeological consequences of a little-known aspect of the antiquities market, the gathering of surface finds to fuel the online collectors’ market in ancient lithic tools. It attempts to characterise the dynamics and effects of this commerce on the basis of a survey of the internet trade in Stone Age artefacts from North Africa and how they reach and are spread in the market countries. It demonstrates that the effects of these activities are having a devastating effect on parts of the archaeological record of the source countries.

Spéculations monétaires, taux de change du rouble et masse monétaire sous Pierre Ier

A l’epoque des reformes de Pierre le Grand, la masse monetaire de la Russie etait en grande partie constituee de « matiere noire », a savoir d’argent cache sous forme de tresors ou circulant sur les marches des changes « noir ou gris », y compris a l’etranger. De telles transactions n’etaient pas enregistrees dans les documents officiels et, des lors restent invisibles aux historiens. L’article tente de decouvrir certaines des pratiques qui permirent de sortir la monnaie de la circulation et d’estimer grossierement la masse monetaire de l’epoque en tenant compte de la « matiere noire ».

Stavovi studentske populacije srpske intelektualne dijaspore o uzrocima i posledicama fenomena "odliva mozgova" iz Srbije - pregled rezultata jednog empirijskog istraživanja

Currently unfolding before us is the process of globalization, which has led to the networking of the global society and the intensification of transnational mobility of human educational capital. In the conditions of regional and class division, the process of asymmetrical globalization is also reflected in the unequal labour exchange in the gray matter market between countries belonging to different areas of the global world system. Of course, Serbia today is also under the effect of the aforementioned process. The subjects of this paper are the global, regional and national causes and consequences of the brain drain from Serbia and the innovative-creative potential of the Serbian intellectual diaspora for the development of Serbia and the protection of its interests in the contemporary world. This research is of a multidisciplinary character - sociological-demographical, ethno-culturological and communicological. Following the dictates of the so-called integral paradigm, efforts have been made to obtain valid results for scientific conclusions through a unity of theoretical problematization and synthesis of the results derived from empirical research. The paper consists of the analysis and interpretation of the results of empirical research done on the topic of causes and consequences of the brain drain, as well as the potential of the Serbian intellectual diaspora, conducted on a two-fold sample: one part consisting of the student population of Serbia and the other of the Serbian intellectual diaspora. The focus of the research was on the beliefs of the respondents regarding the motives, causes and consequences of the brain drain happening in Serbia, as well as the motives and the possibilities for the return to the native country. The sample consists of more than 950 respondents (545 students from Serbia and 413 diaspora members). The results of the research have shown that students and members of the Serbian intellectual diaspora hold identical beliefs regarding the perception of the main cause behind the brain drain in Serbia, with both groups citing the economic underdevelopment of the country and low levels of the quality of life, with both of the aforementioned factors influencing the ability to keep cadres within the country or to encourage their return. Of course, this fact is also conditioned by, among other things, the level of Serbia's involvement in the processes of globalization, as well as by its position in the contemporary division of labour. The very end of the paper also highlights the program of possible measures and recommendations which have an action-oriented character, for the purpose of resolving this problem and creating a new policy regarding diaspora.

Grey Market for Indian IPOs: Investor Sentiment and After-Market Performance

Extant research on developed markets shows that investor sentiment is a prominent feature in IPO grey markets. There is sparse work in the context of emerging markets. We fill this lacuna by studying the working of the Indian IPO market. We consider this work interesting and relevant for the following reasons. First, grey market trading always involves short-selling as securities are not yet available. Since legal and institutional environment is less developed in emerging markets, the functioning of grey markets is of interest to policy makers and financial economists. Second, retail investors participate to a greater extent in IPOs of emerging markets, ostensibly due to the relative paucity of institutional investors. Since prior research has shown that retail investors are more prone to overreaction, it is useful to examine if grey market prices proxy for investor sentiment. Finally, if grey markets are associated with price distortion in initial trading prices, then investors can potentially exploit this by using trading strategies. Our empirical results show that grey market prices are predictable and that these prices are associated with initial listing returns. Furthermore, selling at grey market prices and subsequent short-covering is shown to be profitable.

Gray market and counterfeiting in supply chains: A review of the operations literature and implications to luxury industries

The luxury industries are very important nowadays. However, it is commonly believed that companies in the luxury supply chains are challenged by counterfeiting activities and the presence of gray market. In this paper, we conduct a careful literature review of the most representative papers related to counterfeiting and gray market in the operations literature. We examine both empirical and analytical studies. We uncover the research methodology, industries and objectives of the prior studies. We highlight the current state-of-the-arts findings in the area. Based on the review findings, we propose a future research agenda and discuss the implications to luxury industries.

Managing sustainability tensions in global supply chains: specific investments in closed-loop technology vs ‘blood metals’

This paper discusses how problems of eco-opportunism in metals markets escalate due to market failures because of the increasing scarcity of precious metals. Establishing the right sourcing strategy for recycled material, therefore, is crucial for supply chains and for managing corporate sustainability tensions. We analyse the transaction costs in three strategic models of sourcing from ‘make’ inside the supply chain to contract, and ‘buy’ in the grey market for metals. ‘Blood metals’ leak into the grey markets when there is lack of control, information asymmetry in global supply chains and eco-opportunism in recycling of electronic products. Consequently, the need for traceable supply encourages companies to integrate closed-loop recycling of their products. Furthermore, scarcity of valuable metals along with consumer preferences for sustainable products lead to specific investments in product design and robot technology that disassemble end-of-life products. Together, these factors provide an integrated system that reduces transaction costs and increases recycling efficiency. Therefore, specific assets designed to facilitate reuse of scarce metals like the Apple robot Daisy is a key corporate strategy to secure sustainable performance. Specific investments in disassembling technology like robots in the smartphone industry, should, according to transaction cost theory, be organised as a vertically integrated circular economy. The integrated closed-loop model presented here, control eco-opportunism and the unsustainable character of grey markets for recycled material in electronics.

Supply Chain Contracts in the Presence of Gray Markets

ABSTRACTAbuse of channel incentives by a manufacturer's authorized retailers often encourages gray markets to emerge, which affects supply chain profit as well as the manufacturer's brand image. Therefore, myopically selecting a product distribution contract can be harmful. We analyze the performance of a number of contracts in the presence of a gray market—primarily wholesale price, revenue sharing, and quantity discounts—and analyze their impact on prices charged, quantity ordered, as well as profits. We also investigate their impact on consumer surplus and social welfare. Our results indicate that selection of an appropriate contract is quite crucial, as different contracts give different results across a variety of operating parameters. Their performance is governed by the relative trade‐offs involving diversion of excess quantity to the gray market at the end of the season, an extension of target market due to lower prices in the alternate channel, and the negative impact on the manufacturer's brand that also affects its revenue. We delineate these characteristics and find that, in general, the quantity discount contract performs the worst. Interestingly, if the blowback suffered by the manufacturer on account of product availability in the gray market is high, the wholesale price contract may outperform the other contracts, including the revenue‐sharing contract with a truthful retailer, which otherwise is a more attractive option. We discuss the implications of our analysis, and also provide strategies and pointers to manage the impact of gray markets.

Do Consumers’ Ethical Judgments Matter for Purchase Intentions in Online Gray Markets?

Do Consumers’ Ethical Judgments Matter for Purchase Intentions in Online Gray Markets?

EMFORCED: EM-Based Fingerprinting Framework for Remarked and Cloned Counterfeit IC Detection Using Machine Learning Classification

Electronics supply chain vulnerabilities have broadened in scope over the past two decades. With nearly all integrated circuit (IC) design companies relinquishing their fabrication, packaging, and test facilities, they are forced to rely upon companies from around the world to produce their ICs. This dependence leaves the electronics supply chain open to counterfeiting activities. In this article, we propose an electromagnetic (EM)-based fingerprinting framework, called EMFORCED, to detect remarked and cloned counterfeit ICs. Here, we demonstrate the benefits of using naturally occurring EM side channels to identify the IC design layout without decapsulating the chip under test. Enabling only the clock, $V_{\mathrm{ dd}}$ , and ground pins allows us to generate a design-specific fingerprint that is dependent upon the physical parameters of the chip under test. EMFORCED leverages the EM emissions from the clock distribution network to create a holistic, design-level, fingerprint, including both temporal information and spatial information. We utilize the fingerprint information of functionally similar 8051-series microprocessors from three vendors and perform unsupervised (principal component analysis) and supervised (linear discriminant analysis) machine learning methods on all ICs to determine their intravendor and intervendor similarities. We acquired ICs from multiple dates and lot codes along with variants acquired from the gray market and analyzed them for authenticity using physical inspection and X-ray tomography. Statistical analysis and machine learning techniques are used to demonstrate the reference-free and reference-inclusive classification methods based on EMFORCED measurements. We demonstrate the classification accuracies of 99.46% and 100% for unsupervised and supervised approaches, respectively.

Ascertaining Suspected Wildlife Trade from Detained Parcels Under International Shipment

Wildlife hunting has been in practice since the colonial phase of India which caused a great loss to the nation’s biodiversity. In last few years, several incidences have been reported where live animals and their parts and products were confiscated from the international airports being shipped to meet the emerging demand of wildlife in grey market. Several wild animals have been in a constant demand following the belief that wildlife and its parts have the potential to cure several ailments. In this study, we investigated two detained parcels confiscated by the Customs Authority in the suspicion of illegal wildlife trade containing mysterious animal products of wild origin. The parcels were in transit and were being shipped via air-mail to the United States of America from the Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose International Airport, Kolkata, India. We sequenced the partial fragments of cytochrome b gene and surprisingly, the confiscated specimens showed a 99% homology with the known sequences of Oriental house rat (Rattus tanezumi). On phylogenetic analysis, the confiscated specimens clustered with the known sequences Rattus tanezumi with 100% bootstrap support. These specimens also showed least genetic divergence (DA 0.003–0.013) with Rattus tanezumi, thus identified specimens to be originated from Oriental house rat. This study has proven the imperativeness of the molecular diagnostics tools in ascertaining the species identity from morphologically disfigured and unrecognisable specimens.

Surrogacy in China: Public Opinion, Litigations, and Court Rulings

Culturally, commercial surrogacy has come to be viewed and criticized as immoral. Thus, many prefer it to be outlawed in China. At the same time, “to carry on the bloodline of the family” and having more children are also culturally celebrated in Chinese society.  The two cultural traditions, together with the implementation and gradual revocation of the one-child policy in the 21st century, have led to a dilemma modern Chinese parents are facing: more and more couples feel morally obligated to have more children after the revocation of the one-child policy but are too old to naturally reproduce. With the vagueness of regulations around commercial surrogacy in China, more couples have resorted to surrogacy in the past decade, which currently functions in a grey market. Within the unregulated market, both moral and legal concerns emerge. Through analysis of public opinion, litigations, as well as court rulings on surrogacy in China, this paper asks the following question: To what extent does the societal attitude in China on surrogacy align with that of litigations and court rulings on surrogacy in China? This paper hopes to provide insight into the Chinese surrogacy markets and responses from different actors within the process of surrogacy, leading to broader questions such as: How can litigations in China on surrogacy be improved? How can we ensure rights of all actors in a transaction concerning surrogacy? Should surrogacy be permissible at all? These are relevant questions relating to the structural violence prevalent in the seemingly peaceful modern China and have an impact on the direction of future feminist studies.

Impacts of power dynamics and gray markets on supply chains

We investigate the impact of power dynamics and gray markets when a premium-brand manufacturer sells in both a developed country's market and a developing country's market and a local-brand manufacturer only sells in a developing country's market. We consider two types of power structures between the manufacturers, that is, the dominant manufacturer Stackelberg (DMS) and manufacturer Nash game (MN). Under each power structure, we characterize the condition under which a gray market emerges in equilibrium. We show that the premium-brand manufacturer is always worse off, while the local-brand manufacturer is better off when a gray market emerges. We then focus on comparing the effects of the power structures on manufacturers when a gray market arises. We show that both the premium-brand and local-brand manufacturers obtain higher profits under DMS than under MN as a result of an interaction between the competitions in the two markets. We also demonstrate how the manufacturers' profit gains under DMS relative to those under MN are affected by key parameters, such as consumers' perceived values of the gray market's and the local-brand manufacturer's products. The key implication of our paper is that manufacturers can be better off by entering an agreement to switch from an MN to a DMS power structure when leading manufacturers are combating a gray market.

Marktchancen im Nachhilfe-Bildungsmarkt

Education is a major focus of the German government and is (regarded as) the basis for (technology-oriented) economic development. Approx. 133,4 billion € were spent on education in Germany in 2017. At a first glance this seems to be a positive trend, but not every student can fulfil their schools’ requirements independently. Therefore, many students need the support of private tutoring which is available by local providers as well as by independent online programmes offering proprietary content. But the requirement to attract more capital prevails and new start-ups could help reduce the percentage of providers operating in the grey market.

The CGM grey market: a reflection of global access inequity

The CGM grey market: a reflection of global access inequity

Gray market's product quality in the circular economy era

Gray market occurs when a product is diverted from a market to another without the authorisation of the manufacturer. Conventional wisdom believes that (a) the manufacturer should increase product quality as consumer valuation increases, (b) gray market dilutes the manufacturer's incentive to invest in quality, (c) gray products flow from a low-value market to a high-value one, and (d) the manufacturer can decrease product differentiation across regions to curb gray diversion. This paper provides another look by analysing a game-theoretic model wherein one manufacturer sells a product in two markets, a high-value market and a low-value one, each of which contains one single authorised retailer. Using a game-theoretic approach, we find that (a) in the absence of a gray market, the manufacturer may decrease product quality as consumer valuation increases, (b) a unilateral gray market, which diverts products from the low- to the high-value market, can motivate the manufacturer to improve quality, (c) there may exist two gray markets simultaneously: one diverts products from the low- to the high-value market, and the other occurs along the reverse direction, and (d) when quality can be differentiated across markets, the manufacturer might increase quality differentiation in order to manage gray market.

Effects of IoT technology on gray market: An analysis based on traceability system design

Gray market emerges when the retailer diverts product from a lower-price market to a higher-price market without the manufacturer’s permission. Internet of Thing (IoT) technology enables the manufacturer to track gray-product distribution and monitor gray market activity. In this paper, we aim to introduce IoT technology into gray market management and investigate the impact of IoT technology on gray market and firms' profits. First, we design an IoT-based traceability system which realizes the real-time monitoring of gray market activity. Based on the IoT-based traceability system, then we consider the manufacturer’s two coping strategies and establish three game models to examine how IoT technology affects gray market and firms’ profits. Finally, we present the numerical simulations to perfect and supplement our findings. We find that IoT technology has significant implications which can inhibit gray market. However, it is not always beneficial to the manufacturer or harmful to the retailer. If the manufacturer takes an appropriate coping strategy, a win-win situation can be achieved.

Ochrona konsumenta przez ustawowe limitowanie opłat kredytowych

The subject of the article is presenting the assessment of currently applicable statutory limits, aimed at limiting the interest and non-interest costs of consumer loans against the background of the evolution of the approach to remuneration from capital (usury). Religious, ethical, legal and economic arguments about usury were raised. The analysis shows that in the conditions of high institutional differentiation of the credit-loan sector in Poland, the impact of fees limits is diverse and multidimensional. Evaluation of the impact of regulation can be formulated in the aspect of exploitation, excessive debt, financial exclusion and general social well-being. The conclusions indicate that the statutory limitations of consumer credit costs have negative side effects in many respects. They cause, among others, the limiting of access to short-term low-value loans for the weakest consumers and the development of the gray market. Therefore, despite the noble premises of the legislator, it is more effective to reduce the price of credit and improve the general well-being by supporting the supply side of the market by limiting the risk of running a business and developing competition. The article was based on the study of the subject literature and the analysis of legal provisions regarding the maximum interest and non-interest costs of consumer loans.

The Activities of Customs and Tax Control Service in the Field of Gambling Market

Summary Gambling activity is a multifaceted phenomenon. Gambling is a special field of business. The government authorities ascribe the right to a monopoly of this area of economic activity. The randomness and financial size of gambling foster the development of the grey market. In addition to the economic effect, the moral dimension of this type of activity is an extremely important aspect. The Customs and Tax Control Service supervises the functioning of the gambling market in Poland. Subject and purpose of work: The article is devoted to the issue of gambling. The aim of the research was to present the activities of the Customs and Tax Control Service in the field of legal and illegal gambling. Materials and methods: The study methods used were literature review, legal acts, documents of the Ministry of Finance, statistic data, using quantitive and systems analysis. Results: As a result, the directions of the Customs and Tax Control Service activities were identified in the field of gambling market control. Conclusions: The activities of Customs and Tax Control Service bring results in fighting illegal gambling, protecting players, and raising social awareness of the dangers of using services of illegal gaming operators.

Anal funnels and wonder pills-the dubious market for medical products in the Federal Republic of Germany until 1965

The Federal Republic of Germany was the last European Country without adrug legislation and alaw about drug advertising until the 1960s. Therefore, abroad medical subculture flourished. Various dealers sold drugs and instruments for curing psychosomatic illnesses, especially anti-impotence pills or aids to reduce weight. Thus, the interested client could treat himself/herself without visiting aphysician or apharmacy. Some physicians tried to reduce this grey market, but they were not successful.