Providing interdisciplinary and global perspectives, this book examines historical and contemporary changes in secondhand economies, including the emergence and specialization of secondhand venues, the materials involved, as well as the cultural significance of secondhand things and the professions associated with them. The objects in focus range from used clothing, scrap and waste materials, to antiquities and used cars, thrift stores and circular economies. Growing concerns with sustainability in the West have helped bring about the ‘rediscovery’ of practices of clothing re-use, re-purposing and re-cycling at the same time as major high-street retailers are establishing programs to return used clothing to their stores for re-sale or recycling. As the contributions to this edited volume demonstrate, recent concerns with the fast pace and adverse effects of global commodity flows have increased the scholarly attention to secondhand economies, both in terms of their history and their significance for livelihoods and sustainability. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the journal, Business History.

This book has a fundamental objective. The objective of this research is divided into general objectives and specific objectives. The general objective is to analyze the impact of the economic cooperation programs of the United States on the economic development of Ivory Coast in order to make recommendations and propose solutions and prospects to strengthen the promotion of the economic cooperation of Ivory Coast with the United States. Specifically, this research is focused on evaluating the effect of American trade programs (AGOA, BIT, BUILD Act, AWEP, Prosper Africa and Power Africa) in order to allow Ivory Coast and all the eligible African countries to derive maximum benefit from these programs and to assess the effect of the competitive presence of the United States, China, and the European Union for the economic development of the Ivory Coast.