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TOTM Speaking of Josh’s co-author, David Evans, David just testified the other day before the House Financial Services Committee on a bill, the Welch Bill, HR . . .
Speaking of Josh’s co-author, David Evans, David just testified the other day before the House Financial Services Committee on a bill, the Welch Bill, HR 2382, that would regulate the fees banks charge to each other to process credit card payments. The Welch Bill is actually only one of three pending bills that would regulate interchange fees (the other two offer antitrust exemptions for merchants to negotiate these fees. Because we all know how good antitrust exemptions are).
Read the full piece here.
Scholarship Abstract The creation of a new Consumer Financial Protection Agency (“CFPA”) is a very bad idea and should be rejected. The proposal is not salvageable . . .
The creation of a new Consumer Financial Protection Agency (“CFPA”) is a very bad idea and should be rejected. The proposal is not salvageable and cannot be improved in substance or in form. The foundational premise of the CFPA is that a failure of consumer protection, and specifically irrational consumer behavior in lending markets, was a meaningful cause of the financial crisis and that the CFPA would have or could have averted the crisis or lessened its effects. To the contrary, there is no evidence that consumer ignorance or irrationality was a substantial cause of the crisis or that the existence of a CFPA could have prevented the problems that occurred. The CFPA is likely to do more harm than good for consumers. In this article, we highlight three fundamentally problematic truths about the CFPA: (1) The CFPA is premised on a flawed understanding of the financial crisis, (2) the CFPA will have significant unintended consequences, including but not limited to reducing competition, consumer choice, and availability of credit to consumers for productive uses; and (3) the CFPA creates a powerful bureaucracy with undefined scope, risking expensive and wasteful regulatory overlap at both the federal and state levels without any evidence of its own expertise in the core areas it is designed to regulate.
TOTM Sunstein and Thaler have a series of posts over at Volokh Consipiracy on their new book Nudge, which expands on their notion of libertarian paternalism . . .
Sunstein and Thaler have a series of posts over at Volokh Consipiracy on their new book Nudge, which expands on their notion of libertarian paternalism (see here, here , here and here). Something in the most recent post caught my eye. In preparing to respond to various objections to libertarian paternalism, Sunstein argues that this sort of paternalism offers the “best of both worlds”…
TOTM I started writing this as a comment to Josh’s last post, but it got so long I figured I’d make a post out of it. . . .
I started writing this as a comment to Josh’s last post, but it got so long I figured I’d make a post out of it. Thanks for the inspiration, Josh.
I really hope Radiohead releases the data on its little experiment! My prediction: They will receive an average price of $2 and a median price of $0.
TOTM After receiving the page proofs last week, I’m posting “Behavioral Law and Economics, Paternalism, and Consumer Contracts: An Empirical Perspective” to SSRN. I wrote this . . .
After receiving the page proofs last week, I’m posting “Behavioral Law and Economics, Paternalism, and Consumer Contracts: An Empirical Perspective” to SSRN. I wrote this paper for last year’s NYU Journal of Law & Liberty Symposium on Behavioral Economics™ Challenge to the Classical Liberal Program. The basic idea of the paper is an evaluation of the empirical evidence concerning behavioral and neoclassical theoretical predictions in a few settings where behavioral anomalies are frequently argued to justify paternalistic measures: credit cards, standard form contracts, and shelf space contracts.
TOTM WSJ has a fascinating story this morning about a group of restaurants in Utah, Washington, Colorado and other places adopting a completely voluntary pricing system. . . .
WSJ has a fascinating story this morning about a group of restaurants in Utah, Washington, Colorado and other places adopting a completely voluntary pricing system. No registers. No prices. No “suggested” prices and no tips. The business model is essentially to provide food and allow customers to put whatever they want in a lock box at the front of the store. This is similar to the former economist turned Bagel Man in Freakonomics who delivered bagels to DC area offices on a quasi-honor system.
TOTM Elizabeth Warren (Credit Slips) points to an interesting empirical study by Agarwal, Liu, Souleses, and Chomsisengphet (“ALSC”) which examines consumer credit card selection in a . . .
Elizabeth Warren (Credit Slips) points to an interesting empirical study by Agarwal, Liu, Souleses, and Chomsisengphet (“ALSC”) which examines consumer credit card selection in a natural experiment setting in which a card company offers two cards to consumers: (1) a high interest rate, no annual fee card and (2) a low rate card with an annual fee.
