by Jeff Sovern There's been a lot of discussion recently about whether the Post Office should offer banking services. The idea is that it could serve the unbanked, and that its many existing branches would cover the entire country (Disclosure: one of my brothers works for the Postal Service, though we haven't discussed this idea). For […]
Category Archives: Consumer Law Scholarship
Mark Elliott Budnitz of Georgia State has written Buyer Beware: Georgia Consumers Can't Rely on the Fair Business Practices Act, 6 John Marshall Law Journal 507 (2013). Here is the abstract: In Novare Group, Inc. v. Sarif, the Georgia Supreme Court rejected the plaintiffs' claim that the defendant brokers and developers violated the Georgia Fair […]
Colleen E. Haight of San Jose State University and Derek Thieme of George Mason University's Mercatus Center have written Regulating Automobiles: The Consequences for Consumers. Here is the abstract: Automobiles are ubiquitous. Most Americans take at least one car trip every day to get to work or school or to run household errands. The automobile […]
Jihad Dagher and Yangfan Sun, both of the International Monetary Fund, have written Borrower Protection and the Supply of Credit: Evidence from Foreclosure Laws. Here's the abstract: Laws governing the foreclosure process, which vary across jurisdictions, have direct consequences on creditors’ losses from borrower default, and thus, could potentially affect lending decisions. Our empirical strategy […]
Sandeep Dhameja, Katy R. Jacob and Richard D. Porter, all of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, have written Clarifying Liability for Twenty-First-Century Payment Fraud, 37 Economic Perspectives (2013). Here's the abstract: This article examines the governance structure of retail payments in the United States, provides an overview of payment fraud, and discusses in depth […]
Here. Here's a list of the articles: Credit Reports and Employment: Findings from the 2012 National Survey on Credit Card Debt of Low- and Middle-Income Households by Amy Traub · Medical Debt and Its Relevance When Assessing Creditworthiness by Mark Rukavina Discriminatory Effects of Credit Scoring on Communities of Color by Lisa Rice and Deidre Swesnik The Misconception of […]
James Angel of Georgetown's Finance Department and Douglas M. McCabe of Georgetown's Management Department have written The Ethics of Payments: Paper, Plastic, or Bitcoin? Here is the abstract: Individuals and businesses make billions of payments every day in various forms. Payers have choices about what forms of payment they will make, and payees also have […]
For years now, some have argued that if substantive due process prohibits disproportionately large punitive damages awards against major corporations, it also should stop courts from enforcing excessive contract damages against consumers. See Seana Valentine Shiffrin, Are Credit Card Late Fees Unconstitutional?, 15 Wm. & Mary Bill Rts. J. 457, 460 (2006). Two Ninth Circuit judges […]
Oz Shy of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and Rune Stenbacka of the Swedish School of Economics and Business Administration have written Customer Privacy and Competition. Here is the abstract: We analyze how different degrees of privacy protection affect industry profits, consumer welfare and total welfare. Firms earn higher profits under weak privacy protection […]
Scott Baker of Washington University in Saint Louis and Albert H. Choi of Virginia have written Crowding In: How Formal Sanctions Can Facilitate Informal Sanctions. Here's the abstract: This paper examines the interaction between legal and reputational sanctions in the design of an optimal deterrence regime, particularly in a setting where two parties have a […]