Category Archives: Consumer Law Scholarship

Piché Paper on the Effectiveness of Class Action e-Notices

Catherine Piché of the University of Montreal has written The Coming Revolution in Class Action Notices: Reaching the Universe of Claimants Through Technologies. Here's the abstract: This paper will address whether a correlation may be drawn between the types and modalities of notices sent to class action members and the rate of compensation of these members, […]

Alexandrov & Jiménez Article Finds 2005 Bankruptcy Reforms “Failed Miserably” to Help Students

Alexei Alexandrov, formerly of the CFPB, and Dalié Jiménez of Irvine, Connecticut, and Harvard have written Lessons from Bankruptcy Reform in the Private Student Loan Market, 11 Harvard Law & Policy Review (2017).  Here's the abstract: This article explores the effects of the 2005 bankruptcy amendments in the private student loan market. Overall, our findings suggest that […]

Dalié Jiménez Article Argues for “Automatic Bankruptcy” of Longstanding Consumer Debts

Dalié Jiménez of Irvine, Connecticut and Harvard has written Ending Perpetual Debts, 55 Houston Law Review (2018). Here is the abstract: Consumer debts in the United States can effectively live (and grow) forever: most statutes of limitations do not extinguish them; they can morph into relatives’ obligations after the debtor’s death; and they sometimes rise from […]

Silber & Stites Paper on Merchant Authorized Consumer Cash Subsitutes

Norman I. Silber of Hofstra and Steven Stites of Stites & Harbison PLLC have written Merchant Authorized Consumer Cash Substitutes. Here is the abstract: Merchant Authorized Consumer Cash Substitutes (MACCS) have existed in one form or another for hundreds of years although without a generic name. At nineteenth century American railroad construction sites far from established […]

Study Finds Widespread Sexual Orientation and Intersectionality Discrimination in Mortgage Lending

Shahar Dillbary of Alabama and Griffin Sims Edwards of the University of Alabama at Birmingham – Department of Marketing, Industrial Distribution & Economics have written An Empirical Analysis of Sexual Orientation Discrimination, University of Chicago Law Review, 2018 Forthcoming. Here's the abstract: This study is the first to empirically demonstrate widespread discrimination across the United States based on […]

Article on When Consumers Trust and Seek Advice from Sellers

Justin Sevier and Kelli Alces Williams, both of Florida State, have written Consumers, Seller-Advisors, and the Psychology of Trust, Boston College Law Review, Forthcoming.  Here is the abstract: Every day, consumers ask sellers for advice. Because they do not or cannot know better, consumers rely on that advice in making financial decisions of varying significance. Sellers, motivated […]

Colin Marks Paper: Online Terms as In Terrorem Devices

Colin P. Marks of St. Mary's has written Online Terms as In Terrorem Devices.  Here's the abstract: Online shopping has quickly replaced the brick-and-mortar experience for a large portion of the consuming public. The online transaction itself is rote: browse items, add them to your cart, and checkout. Somewhere along the way, the consumer is likely […]

Matt Bruckner Article on FinTech and Big Data

Matthew A. Bruckner of Howard has written The Promise and Perils of Algorithmic Lenders' Use of Big Data, 93 Chicago-Kent Law Review (2018). Here's the abstract: Like many new technologies, algorithmic lenders’ use of Big Data holds great promise but may also be perilous. At the most basic level, Big Data is simply a toolkit for “creating, […]

Empirical Study of Third Party Consumer Litigation Funding

Ronen Avraham of Tel Aviv University – Tel Aviv University, Buchmann Faculty of Law and Texas and Anthony J. Sebok of Cardozo have written An Empirical Investigation of Third Party Consumer Litigation Funding, 104 Cornell Law Review __ (2018).  Here is the abstract: This is the first large-scale empirical study of consumer third-party litigation funding in the […]

Dari-Mattiacci & Marotta-Wurgler Paper on How Authors of Standard Form Contracts Learn and Revise Contracts

Giuseppe Dari‐Mattiacci of Amsterdam Law School; Amsterdam Business School; and the Tinbergen Institute and Florencia Marotta-Wurgler of NYU have written Learning in Standard Form Contracts: Theory and Evidence.  Here is the abstract: We explore learning and change in standard form contracts. We hypothesize that drafters (sellers) are more likely to revise the terms they offer when […]