CommentsEverything Old Is New Again

Soia Mentschikoff wrote Commercial Arbitration nearly sixty years ago, yet, like all great articles, it continues to offer lessons and guidance for today. The article was one of the first to recognize that the term “arbitration” actually covered a variety of related, but importantly different, types of mechanisms. Through her exhaustive empirical study, Mentschikoff developed a taxonomy for describing these differences, categorizing arbitration into two basic subsets: individuated and administered, with the latter category in turn comprising two separate subtypes, one where the trade group provided the administration and one where the administrator was a third party. It was in exploring the differences among these types of arbitration that Mentschikoff made her most long-lasting contributions. This is true in two regards. First, she noted that one key way in which arbitral subtypes varied was in the extent to which lawyers played a role, and she warned that increased lawyer involvement may have dramatic negative impacts on the utility of arbitration. Second, in studying the various different types of arbitration and the parties’ techniques for choosing among them, Mentschikoff confirmed that different types of disputes may be better suited to one form of arbitration than another. This observation takes on increased urgency in a world where there seems to be an ever-increasing rush to one-size-fits-all or monolithic arbitration. In both of these regards Mentschikoff was ahead of her time, and her article remains both an important and fascinating read....

Stratified Random Sampling Methodology for Observing Community Mask Use within Indoor Settings: Results from Louisville, Kentucky during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Wearing a facial mask can limit COVID-19 transmission. Measurements of communities’ mask use behavior have mostly relied on self-report. This study’s objective was to devise a method for measuring the prevalence of mask-wearing and proper mask use in indoor public areas without relying on self-report. A stratified random sample of retail trade stores (public areas) in Louisville, Kentucky, USA, was selected and targeted for observation by trained surveyors during December 14−20, 2020. The stratification allowed for investigating mask use behavior by city district, retail trade group, and public area size. The average mask use prevalence among observed visitors of the 382 visited public areas was 96%, while the average prevalence of proper use was 86%. In 17% of the public areas, at least one unmasked visitor was among the observed visitors; in 48%, at least one improperly masked visitor was observed. The average mask use among staff was 92%, but unmasked staff were observed in fewer public areas, as an unmasked staff member was observed in 11% of the visited public areas. The average prevalence of proper make use among staff was 87%, similar to the average among visitors. However, the percentage of public areas where at least one improperly masked staff was observed was 33. Significant disparities in mask use and its proper use were observed among both visitors and staff by public area size, retail trade type, and geographical area. Observing unmasked and incorrectly masked visitors was more common in small (less than 1500 square feet) public areas than larger ones, also in food and grocery stores than other retail stores. Also, the majority of the observed unmasked persons were male and middle age adults.

Rossmann kauft mit RTG ein

Rossmann tritt der Retail Trade Group (RTG) bei. Die Händlerkooperation gewinnt dadurch ein Umsatzvolumen von über 7 Mrd. Euro hinzu. Der Drogeriekonzern will vor allem beim Einkauf von Lebensmitteln profitieren.

Socialist Supermarkets and “Peaceful Competition”

This chapter focuses on Eastern Europe, highlighting the ways in which the communist contestants in the Farms Race pursued noncapitalist goals in the economic battles of the Cold War. Supermarket USA—a project jointly pursued by the U.S. Department of Commerce and a private supermarket trade group in 1957—was the first full-scale American-style supermarket to be erected in a communist country. U.S. propagandists touted the Supermarket USA exhibit at Zagreb’s 1957 trade fair as proof of the power of capitalist agriculture and efficient food distribution. Yugoslavian communist leaders, however, recognized the potential for deploying supermarkets in their campaign to convince restive rural peasants to accept socialist approaches to food production. The Yugoslavian adaptation of American supermarkets contrasts with the Soviet Union’s efforts, under the leadership of the rhetorically gifted Nikita Khrushchev, to defy American proclamations of capitalism’s superiority as a mode for spurring agricultural productivity and consumer abundance. In particular, the chapter highlights the ways in which the famous 1959 Kitchen Debate between Khrushchev and U.S. vice president Richard Nixon should be understood as a debate not just about kitchens or consumerism but about the structure of the agricultural systems that fed into both capitalist and communist kitchens.