April 25, 2010

A Follow Up on the Cato Unbound Conversation on New Paternalism

Joshua Wright

Two weeks ago I highlighted the promising looking Cato Unbound forum on the new paternalism kicked off by Glen Whitman, with follow up posts and responses from the King (or…

March 21, 2010

Politically-Mandated Credit Card Interchange Fees Won’t Create Jobs (But They Will Hurt Consumers and the Economy)

Geoffrey A. Manne

In a recent commentary at Forbes.com, former Clinton administration economist Robert Shapiro argues that some 250,000 jobs would be created, and consumers would save $27 billion annually, by reducing the interchange fee charged to merchants for transactions made by consumers using credit and debit cards.

March 9, 2010

Has the Obama Administration Retreated From Behavioral Economics?

Joshua Wright

The WSJ implies that the answer is yes in an interesting article describing the Obama administration’s changing views on behavioral economics and regulation.  The theme of the article is that…

February 28, 2010

Disclosure of ethics waivers under SOX: Recent scholarship from Rodrigues and Stegemoller

Geoffrey A. Manne

Usha Rodrigues and Mike Stegemoller have penned an interesting article, “Placebo Ethics,” assessing the effect of one of SOX’s disclosure provisions: The required immediate disclosure of waivers from a company’s…

February 5, 2010

Posner cites Wright

Geoffrey A. Manne

I’m sure it’s an honor just to be nominated. A recent opinion from Judge Posner cites our very own Josh Wright (Joshua D. Wright & Todd J. Zywicki, “Three Problematic…

January 21, 2010

Note to Simon Johnson: I do not think antitrust means what you think it means

Geoffrey A. Manne

Simon Johnson is at it again, advocating the use of antitrust to break up the banks because they are, you know, big, and antitrust is about busting up big companies,…

January 20, 2010

The problem with paper payments

Geoffrey A. Manne

Jim Van Dyke (who contributed to our interchange symposium) has an interesting post up today recounting a brief glimpse of life without payment cards: What would a day without payment…

January 18, 2010

Gretchen Morgenson Calls for Greater Protection (?) of High-Risk Consumers of Credit

Thomas Lambert

Gretchen Morgenson doesn’t want poor people to have access to consumer credit. At least, that’s what I think she’s saying in her rambling NYT column this week. Congress and federal…

January 6, 2010

Credit card annual fees and the self-appointed consumer protectors

Geoffrey A. Manne

Adam Levitin has a blog post up responding to Todd Zywicki’s recent WSJ editorial on credit card interchange fees.  As most readers know, this is a topic of significant interest…