Author Archives: Jeff Sovern

President to Nominate Joshua Wright to FTC

You can read a New York Law Journal report here.  Wright is a professor at George Mason.  The article highlights his devotion to Chicago-school economics and reports that he rejects the use of behavioral economics in antitrust. The article also opines that if Governor Romney wins the presidency, Wright would be a potential FTC Chairman. […]

Paper on Forum Shopping in Debt Collection

Judith L. Fox of Notre Dame has written How Forum Determines Substance in Judicial Debt Collection, 31 Banking and Financial Services Rev. 11 (August 2012). Here's the abstract: In an email to the Small Claims Task Force, a committee appointed by the Indiana Supreme Court to investigate allegations of abuse in the Marion County Small […]

Former FDIC Head Sheila Bair on the CFPB

Bair has a new book out, and so has been the subject of some media attention.  CNN/Money interviewed her and among the questions was an exchange about the CFPB.  Her reply:  I support the Bureau, and I also strongly endorse it in the book.  And I think they’re doing a good job.  I am, if […]

Paper on the Oldest Financial Institution

Paige Marta Skiba of Vanderbilt, Marieke Bos of Stockholm University – Swedish Institute for Social Research and Susan Carter of the United States Military Academy have written The Pawn Industry and Its Customers: The United States and Europe.  Here's the abstract: As humankind’s oldest financial institution, pawnbroking has served the financial needs of low-income families […]

Paper on Behavioral Economic Approach to Credit Reporting Consumer Protection

Adi Osovsky, a Harvard SJD candidate, has written The Misconception of the Consumer as a Homo Economicus: A Behavioral Economic Approach to Consumer Protection in the Credit Reporting System, forthcoming in the Suffolk University Law Review.  Here's the abstract: The significant increase in the number of consumer transactions, along with the expansion of information technology, […]

Amitai Etzioni Paper on Privacy Merchants

Amitai Etzioni has written The Privacy Merchants: What is to Be Done?  Here is the abstract: Rights have been long understood, first and foremost, as protection of the private from the public, the individual from the State. True, we also recognize positive rights (such as socioeconomic rights) and the government’s duty to protect citizens from violations […]