Vanderbilt Ph.D. student Kathryn Fritzdixon, Jim Hawkins of Houston, & Paige Marta Skiba of Vanderbilt have writtetn Dude, Where's My Car Title?: The Law, Behavior, and Economics of Title Lending Markets. Here's the abstract: Millions of credit-constrained borrowers turn to title loans to meet their liquidity needs. Legislatures and regulators have debated how to best […]
Dalie Jimenez of Connecticut, James Greiner of Harvard, Lois R. Lupica of Maine, & Rebecca L. Sandefur of the American Bar Foundationand Illinois have written Using a Randomized Control Trial to Accomplish Multiple Goals: An RCT Evaluating What Works for Individuals in Financial Distress, Investigating the Debt Collection System, Exploring Ways to Increase Access to […]
by Brian Wolfman Need another reason to avoid next year's long, self-congratulatory Oscars' awards? How about that the movie industry is the principal lobbyist for, and the prime beneficiary of, government largesse that may be eating away at your kids' school funding or support for your local fire fighters? We know that tax-paid consumer services […]
Sarah Kliff reports here that Researchers combed through data available from the 15 states that publicly post all requests for rate increases in the individual market. They found that, in 2009, 74 percent of all requests came in above 10 percent. By 2012, that number had fallen to 35 percent. Preliminary data for 2013, which […]
by Brian Wolfman Think about these things: The "tax gap." In 2006, the "tax gap" — the difference between the taxes owed by Americans and the taxes that they pay — was a stunning $450 billion. The IRS then went out and enforced the tax laws and recovered $65 billion, making the net tax gap […]
Ariel Porat of Tel Aviv University and Chicago and Lior Strahilevitz of Chicago have written Personalizing Default Rules and Disclosure with Big Data. Here's the abstract: This paper provides the first comprehensive account of personalized default rules and personalized disclosure in the law. Under a personalized approach to default rules, individuals are assigned default terms […]
by Jeff Sovern Today's Times Haggler column, Calling Out the Robocaller, written by David Segal, and about a troublesome telemarketer, Your Financial Ladder, operated by the Helfenstines, includes an ominous discussion about the effectiveness of a Florida consumer protection agency: [A] spokesman for the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services says it recently started an investigation […]
Read this story by Jessica Silver-Greenberg. She reports that just as 15 U.S. states have banned payday loans, some of the world's biggest banks are playing a key role in facilitating the loans in a way that aims to evade those states' laws. Here's an excerpt: Major banks have quickly become behind-the-scenes allies of Internet-based […]
The University of Connecticut School of Law announces a writing competition for junior legal scholars, called the 2013 Junior Scholars Workshop on Financial Services Law. The competition is open to law faculty with less than six years of teaching experience. The competition is open only to papers that explore topics in financial services law. Appropriate […]
by Jeff Sovern Javelin Strategy & Research has issued its annual report on identity fraud (a free version is available here). Javelin reports that 12.6 million Americans–or more than 5%–were victims of identity fraud in 2012, an increase of a million from 2011. It also states that nearly a quarter of consumers who received data breach […]