National approaches to consumer protection in France and Germany, 1970-1990

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Political Science, 1999.Includes bibliographical references (p. 379-404).This research investigates the growth of product market regulation in France and Germany from 1970 to 1990. It finds that these countries have pursued divergent strategies for regulating their domestic product markets. France has treated consumers as citizens, granting them special political protections against product risk. Germany has treated consumers as producers, emphasizing consumer information as a means of combatting market failure. This policy divergence resulted from the different institutional contexts in which the issues of consumer policy were first raised and resolved. As a consequence of these broad institutional differences, France and Germany have put in place divergent national consumption regimes, in which different sets of consumer and producer interests are systematically emphasized in government regulation. Such national divergence in consumption regimes is important because it will increasingly influence consumer and producer decisions about product choice, and these choices in turn set the terms of national variations of capitalism.by Johnathan Gunnar Trumbull.Ph.D

Contested Ideas of the Consumer : National Strategies of Product Market Regulation in France and Germany

Digitised version produced by the EUI Library and made available online in 2020.Consumer protection appeared as a nell'area of policy in France and Germany in the 1970s. The regulatory approaches adopted by France and by Germany did not. however. emerge from deep national traditions of consumer protection. Indeed in many areas of consumer regulation such national traditions simply did not exist. Instead. the policy models that came to dominate in each country emerged from a heated political struggle that took place between producers and consumers in the 1970s and early 1980s over the identity of the consumer. At stake in this conflict was the degree of responsibility that consumers and producers faced for product-related risk

A Brief Postwar History of U.S. Consumer Finance

In this brief history of U.S. consumer finance since World War II, the sector is defined based on the functions delivered by firms in the form of payments, savings and investing, borrowing, managing risk, and providing advice. Evidence of major trends in consumption, savings, and borrowing is drawn from time-series studies. An examination of consumer decisions, changes in regulation, and business practices identifies four major themes that characterized the consumer finance sector: innovation that increased the choices available to consumers; enhanced access in the form of consumers' broadening participation in financial activities; do-it-yourself consumer finance, which both allowed and forced consumers to take greater responsibility for their own financial lives; and a resultant increase in household risk taking