Here. An excerpt: In late March, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau—the consumer watchdog agency dreamt up by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.)—issued new, voluntary guidelines aimed at ensuring car dealerships are not illegally ripping off minorities. Since then, 13 Senate Democrats, including Sens. Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.) and Mary Landrieu (D-La.); and 22 House Dems, including Reps. […]
Those are the subjects of Cost-Benefit Analysis of Financial Regulation: Case Studies and Implications, by law professor John Coates. Here is the abstract: Some members of Congress, the D.C. Circuit, and legal academia are promoting a particular, abstract form of cost-benefit analysis for financial regulation: judicially enforced quantification. How would CBA work in practice, if […]
Perhaps sign-ups on the Affordable Care Act's exchanges are lagging, but, as explained in this article by Sabrina Tavernise, in states that have accepted the Act's medicaid expansion, the Act is providing health insurance to many people who previously lacked it. "In West Virginia," for example, "where the Democratic governor agreed to expand Medicaid eligibility, the […]
by Jeff Sovern I'm finally getting around to reading the CFPB's December 12 report, Arbitration Study: Preliminary Results, about which Brian blogged here. Though the Bureau does not make much of it, perhaps because the natural experiment has some flaws (as natural experiments often do), the CFPB Study sheds some light on the impact of arbitration […]
by Deepak Gupta Should a defendant in a consumer fraud class action be able to defeat certification through evidence that its customers say they are "satisfied," even when the the allegation is that the product is snake oil? Or would that transform the placebo effect into a defense to fraud? That's the question the Ninth […]
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 […]
The Wall Street Journal has the story here.
So says consumer law professor Creola Johnson of Ohio State in her new book, Is a Law Degree Still Worth the Price?
by Allen B. Isaacson, guest blogger On Thursday, Geoffrey Stone, University of Chicago’s Edward H. Levi Distinguished Service Professor of Law, summarized the findings of a 300-page report titled Liberty and Security in a Changing World, released on December 12th by a panel of five law and intelligence experts (including Stone) appointed by President Obama […]