Category Archives: Consumer Law Scholarship

Todd Zywicki on Network Branded Prepaid Cards

Todd J. Zywicki of George Mason has written The Economics and Regulation of Network Branded Prepaid Cards. Here is the abstract: General-purpose reloadable prepaid cards have been one of the fastest-growing sectors of the consumer payments marketplace in recent years. Their importance has accelerated as a consequence of new regulations enacted in the wake of […]

Paper on Add-ons to Consumer Products and Services and Behavioral Economics

Tom Baker of Penn and Peter Siegelman of Connecticut have written Protecting Consumers from Add-On Insurance Products: New Lessons for Insurance Regulation from Behavioral Economics. Here's the abstract: Persistently high profits on “insurance” for small value losses sold as an add-on to other products or services (such as extended warranties sold with consumer electronics, loss […]

Paper on the Foreclosure Crisis in Appalachia

Jenna Rosie Tighe of Appalachian State has written Responding to the Foreclosure Crisis in Appalachia: A Policy Review and Survey of Housing Counselors, 23 Housing Policy Debate No. 1 (2013). Here's the abstract: Existing research on the foreclosure crisis tends to focus on national trends or on metropolitan areas. Few studies focus on rural areas, […]

Paper on Payment Card Security Measures

Edward A. Morse of Creighton and Vasant Raval of Creighton Business have written Private Ordering in Light of the Law: Acheiving Consumer Protection through Payment Card Security Measures, 10 DePaul Business & Commercial Law Journal 213 (2012).  Here's the abstract: A private ordering regime has developed within the payment card industry to define appropriate security […]

Omri Ben-Shahar Paper Looks at Which Consumers Are Hurt Most by Arbitration Clauses

Omri Ben-Shahar of Chicago has written Arbitration and Access to Justice: Economic Analysis. Here is the abstract: Mandatory arbitration clauses in consumer contracts are widely regarded as problematic because they limit consumer’s access to judicial forums, to fair procedures, and potentially to any kind of remedy. But rather than looking at consumers as a group, […]

Paper Proposes Solution to Class Arbitration Problem

Emanwel J. Turnbull has written Opting Out of the Procedural Morass: A Solution to the Class Arbitration Problem, forthcoming in the Widener L. Rev. Here's the abstract: American class actions are internationally regarded as a procedural form to avoid and widely criticized in the United States. They have been narrowed and restricted by U.S. statutes […]

James Nehf on the Failed Promise of Information Privacy

James P. Nehf of Indiana University has written Open Book: The Failed Promise of Information Privacy in America.  Here's the abstract: With financial and other personal information about us in countless databases, and with companies such as Facebook and Google collecting data about their users to drive profits and satisfy expectations of shareholders, there is […]

Mortgage Crisis in a Nutshell Video

John E. Campbell of Denver has created a video on the mortgage crisis. Here's the abstract (yes, there's an abstract): Before becoming a law professor, much of my work was as a litigator and appellate attorney. I became increasingly passionate about the problems that exist in the mortgage industry. I also became increasingly aware that […]

Shauhin Talesh Study on How Dispute Resolution Structures Affect Implementation of Consumer Law

Shauhin A. Talesh of Irvine has written How Dispute Resolution System Design Matters: An Organizational Analysis of Dispute Resolution Structures and Consumer Lemon Laws, 46 Law & Society Review (2012).  Here's the abstract: This study demonstrates how the structure of dispute resolution shapes the extent to which managerial and business values influence the meaning and implementation of […]

Another Concepcion Paper, This Time From Harvard

David Korn and David Rosenberg of Harvard have written Concepcion's Pro-Defendant Biasing of the Arbitration Process: The Class Counsel Solution.  Here's the abstract: By mandating that numerous plaintiffs litigate their common question claims separately in individual arbitrations rather than jointly in class action arbitrations, the Supreme Court in AT&T Mobility LLC v. Concepcion created a […]