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The conducted researches have shown that the features of the housing and communal sector do not allow talking about the possibility of calculating the “optimal” tariff rate. The development of an effective method of tariff formation for rural areas is particularly acute. The use of traditional method to calculate the amount of tariffs for housing and communal services provided to the population and enterprises (called “cost plus” approach) consists in a simple summation of the cost price of a service with a premium that was set directly by a particular housing and communal enterprise within the maximum and minimum values. The authors found that none of the current pricing and tariffs’ setting methods fulfills the requirements for an effective and economically founded tariff policy in the housing and communal services sector. In this regard, the development of a new methodology that will ensure the receipt of compromise tariffs for housing and communal services is required. Compromise analysis, the main purpose of which is to obtain optimal prices, can be used as a basis of such methodology.

According to article 24 of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), preferential trade arrangements (custom unions) and free trade areas are allowed by the World Trade Organization (WTO). The GATT requires that these agreements cover substantially all trade and that existing external tariffs should not be raised by the countries concluding free trade agreements. Article 24 of GATT stipulates that: A free-trade area shall be understood to mean a group of two or more customs territories in which the duties and other restrictive regulations of commerce...are eliminated on substantially all the trade between the constituent territories in products originating in such territories. Unfortunately, the prescriptions of article 24 requiring substantially all trade to be covered by a free trade area have never been enforced, and in fact, what “substantially all trade” means has never been defined.2 As a result, many free trade agreements have often excluded sensitive sectors like agriculture but those agreements have still been accepted by the GATT. With an eye to article 24, Canada’s chief negotiator for the Canada-EU agreement, Steve Verheul, has stated that “we have agreed from the start everything is on the table.”3 Thus, one major objective of this article is to assess the major challenges that the Canada-EU negotiators will face in tackling the entrenched agricultural trade barriers that exist on both sides of the Atlantic.

Stock futures are indicating a lower open one day after jumping to record levels to kickoff December. The Dow rallied a hundred and eighty-five points on Tuesday, the NASDAQ jumped a hundred and fifty-six closing at a fresh record, and a photo finish for the S&P 500 closing up forty points, also a record. This Cyber Monday marks history as the biggest online shopping day ever. Consumers spent a whopping twelve million dollars per minute on everything from toys to clothes and electronics.

When purchasing a ticket to a performance good, such as a movie or sporting event, the consumer does not actually buy the product, but simply access to viewing the product. Although the performance is the primary impetus for the ticket purchase, many performance goods offer complementary products such as concessions to their patrons. This paper suggests that when the price setter receives a share of revenues from concessions, overall profits will be maximized when tickets are priced in the inelastic section of demand. The model can be used to explain inelastic point estimates for ticket pricing found in other performance good studies.

In some parts of the world, protectionist tendencies are on the rise once more. This is particularly true of the United States, which has adopted a more restrictive trade policy stance in recent times. By imposing additional tariffs on China and other trading partners, the US Administration hopes to win trade concessions as well as to strengthen its own economy and boost domestic employment. However, following the escalation of the US- China trade dispute, there has been a decrease not only in US imports from China but also in US exports to China. In addition, there have been no indications to date that the United States has either substituted its imports from China with thirdcountry imports or increased domestic production of these goods on a large scale. Chinese exporters do not appear to have made any substantial price concessions, either. All of this suggests that neither the US economy nor US consumers have benefited from the realignment of the country's trade policy thus far. Furthermore, the empirical evidence indicates that no \"lucky bystanders\" have profited as yet from the dispute between the United States and China. While trade diversion effects appear to have been largely non- existent, trade policy disputes are likely to have exacerbated uncertainty worldwide. This, in turn, has probably put additional strain on investment and thus global economic activity. Should an all-out trade war break out between the United States and the European Union, the consequences for the global economy could be far graver still. Counteracting protectionist efforts would require the rules-based trading system, with the World Trade Organization (WTO) at its core, to be strengthened. This involves amending rules with a view to improving the protection of intellectual property and addressing the way in which it deals with state-owned enterprises. However, the success of such an ambitious push for reform depends on the constructive participation of all WTO members. Trade agreements such as those concluded on an ever more frequent basis by the European Union in recent times are only an imperfect substitute for a functioning multilateral order.