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Commerce · IV.08 · MMXXVI · daylight

La Bourse  /  Volume IV  /  Nº IV.08  /  Quiz, reflection, essays

ASSESSMENT · Chapter IV.08 — The Repair Economy

Three instruments: a ten-point quiz, eight reflection questions, five essay prompts. The quiz checks comprehension rather than recall. The reflections are private and first-person. The essays are arguable from more than one side.

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THE QUIZ — ten points

Four on recall.

1. Write the repair ratio, define each term, and say why q sits where it does.

R = (w·h + p + k) · L_n / (q · L_r · C_n), and repair wins when R < 1. w charge-out rate, h hours including diagnosis, p part, k fixed cost of the job, q first-time fix probability, L_r residual life after repair, L_n life of a new unit, C_n replacement price. q is in the denominator because failed attempts are paid for too — a shop fixing 0.70 of jobs first time carries a 42.86 percent loading, 43 percent as the page prints it, on every job that does hold. One mark for the expression, one for q.

2. Name the four levers that move the threshold rate, and rank them for the worked washing machine.

Residual life L_r, fixed cost k, hours h, part price p. On the machine: £130.68, £98.86, £97.73, £67.61 against a base of £48.86 — so movements of +£81.82, +£50.00, +£48.86 and +£18.75. Residual life is roughly four times the part price.

3. State the scope limit of Directive (EU) 2024/1799 and the date it applies from.

It applies from 31 July 2026. The repair obligation reaches only Annex II, and Annex II reaches only goods already carrying ecodesign repairability requirements — so it is a list, not a general right. The consumer choosing repair gains 12 months of extra legal guarantee.

4. What did France's own evaluation of the repairability index find?

Using more than 20,000,000 sales lines over three years from two retailers: the effect on sales of more repairable goods was positive and statistically significant online, and positive but not statistically significant in store. Awareness 55.0 percent; 66.0 percent called it useful.

Four on application.

5. A campaign proposes halving the price of spare parts as its single demand. Using the chapter's instrument, evaluate the demand.

It acts on p, the weakest of the four levers. On the washing machine it raises the threshold from £48.86 to £67.61 an hour — £18.75 — against £81.82 for three more years of residual life. The stronger answer notes that parts access still matters enormously for the shop's survival, because parts carry the margin that hours cannot, and that this is a different argument from the consumer-bill one.

6. Why is Oregon's parts-pairing ban described as the most economically consequential right-to-repair provision written so far?

Because pairing is not a parts cost, it is an hours cost: it turns a completable job into a diagnostic dead end, raising h and lowering q at once. h is the second-strongest lever — halving it on the machine moves the threshold from £48.86 to £97.73. Credit any answer noting the provision applies to devices made after 1 January 2025.

7. Back Market reached EBITDA break-even in 2025 and runs a 35.0 percent EBITDA margin in France. Swappie's 2024 net margin was −8.47 percent. Both sell refurbished phones. Explain the 43.47-point gap.

Back Market is a marketplace taking roughly a tenth of GMV — 14.14 percent of $3,500.0 million as $495.0 million of revenue — and never touches a device. Swappie employs the technicians. The gap is the labour term w·h. The strongest answer draws the general rule: value in the repair economy accrues to whoever is not doing the repairing, unless somebody deliberately arranges otherwise.

8. France's repair fund paid €29.3 million of a budgeted €130.0 million across its first three years. Diagnose, using the instrument.

22.5 percent uptake. The subsidy was sized about right — the arithmetic puts the gap on a washing machine at £24.08 against a launch bonus of €25.00 — but reach is governed by k: the consumer must find an accredited repairer, transport the object and claim. Credit answers proposing collection points, automatic application at the till, or retailer accreditation, all of which attack k rather than p.

Two that require the arithmetic to be done.

9. A laptop costs $950.00 new and lasts 6 years. A board repair buys 3 years of residual life, the part is $180.00, handling is $25.00, the job takes 1.50 hours, and the shop fixes it first time 85 percent of the time. Compute the threshold rate, and say whether a $90.00 shop should take the work. Show your working.

A = q·L_r·C_n / L_n = 0.85 × 3 × 950 / 6 = 403.75. w = (403.75 − 180 − 25) / 1.50 = 198.75 / 1.50 = $132.50 an hour. At $90.00, R = (90 × 1.5 + 180 + 25) × 6 / (0.85 × 3 × 950) = 0.8421. Yes — repair wins with room. The point of the question is that the answer is a rate, and a rate can be compared to the shop's own price list.*

10. Using the washing machine figures, compute the hourly shortfall a UK shop faces if it must pay the National Living Wage, then say which single lever closes it and by how much.

The US charge-out-to-wage multiple is $132.00 / $24.34 = 5.4232. At the April 2026 National Living Wage of £12.71, the minimum viable charge-out is £68.93 an hour. The threshold is £48.86, so the shop is short £20.06 an hour — £24.08 on a 1.20-hour job. Lifting residual life from 5 to 8 years moves the threshold to £130.68 and the shop clears with £61.75 an hour to spare. Full marks require stating the distributional consequence: repair is strongest where labour is cheapest, and the implied technician wage at the base threshold is £9.01, or 70.9 percent of the legal floor.

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REFLECTION — eight questions, for one person and a pen

These are not for a room. Write the answers by hand if you can; the slowness is the point.

1. Name the last thing you repaired rather than replaced. What decided it — money, time, attachment, or the fact that somebody competent was near?

1. Name the last thing you replaced that could have been repaired. What was the real obstacle, and which of the four terms was it?

1. Whose labour has made your life work in ways you have not priced? Answer about people before answering about objects.

1. What do you own that you would keep for thirty years if you could be sure of parts? What would you pay, once, for that certainty?

1. Where in your own work are you the marketplace and where are you the refurbisher — that is, where do you take a margin on other people's effort, and where is your own effort the margin somebody else takes?

1. You have read that repairing a four-hundred-pound washing machine cannot pay the legal minimum wage in Britain. Sit with that for a minute before deciding what it implies. What did you first want to conclude, and is that conclusion in the arithmetic or in you?

1. What skill do you have that lowers somebody's h — that lets a thing be understood faster because you are in the room? Have you ever charged for it as such?

1. If you could publish one number about something you make or sell, and be held to it for ten years, what number would you choose?

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ESSAY PROMPTS — five

Each is arguable from more than one side. Each requires at least one source the chapter cites and at least one it does not.

1. The distributional problem, taken seriously. The chapter finds that repair is structurally strongest where wages are lowest. Argue either that a high-wage repair economy is achievable through the levers the instrument names — residual life, hours, fixed cost, part price — or that it is achievable only through subsidy, and that a permanently subsidised repair sector is a wage policy wearing an environmental coat. Use the chapter's French fund figures and Perzanowski, and at least one source on wage structure in personal services that the chapter does not cite.

2. Is the index worth keeping? France's own evaluation found the repairability index's effect on in-store sales positive but not statistically significant. Argue for retaining and strengthening it — on grounds of design pressure on manufacturers rather than consumer choice — or for replacing it entirely with price instruments. Engage the CGDD and DITP evaluation directly, and one published critique or defence the chapter does not cite.

3. Scope as the whole of the law. Directive (EU) 2024/1799 obliges repair only for goods already carrying ecodesign repairability requirements. Write the case that a narrow, enforceable scope achieves more than a broad, unenforceable one — then write the strongest rebuttal. Conclude with which you find more persuasive and why. Use the directive text itself and one national transposition the chapter does not discuss.

4. Who should own the fault library? The Open Repair Alliance's 208,491 records of what actually breaks were compiled by volunteers and given away; manufacturers hold far larger equivalents and do not. Argue whether failure data should be a public good, a regulated disclosure, or legitimate private property. Use the Open Repair Alliance's data release and Ostrom on common-pool resources, plus one source on data governance the chapter does not cite.

5. Selling service instead of goods. Walter Stahel argued half a century ago that a firm selling performance rather than product would want its products to last. Take a real firm and argue either that a performance contract would raise its margin, using the chapter's four levers as the mechanism, or that the model fails outside a narrow band of capital-intensive, high-C_n goods. Use Stahel and the chapter's Renault material, plus one product-service-system case study the chapter does not cite.