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In the WSJ, Professor Macey takes measure of the CFPB’s new mortgage disclosures and finds them lacking:

The CFPB is proposing to revise the old forms into a new Loan Estimate Form and Closing Disclosure Form. The old loan form had been five pages; according to the agency website, the new one is three. The closing form remains at five pages. That’s a net savings of two pieces of paper. But the agency rules required to implement the new forms weigh in at an astonishing 1,099 pages.

In evaluating the substance of the new disclosure themselves, Macey concludes the new forms are likely to harm consumers rather than help them.

Do the new rules expand consumer choice? They would forbid many borrowers from making smaller payments every month, followed by a single, one-time balloon payment to retire the principal at the end. They also would cap late fees—which means borrowers would be unable to get a lower interest rate on a loan by agreeing to pay a penalty if they don’t make their payments on time.

The new rules restrict loan-modification fees, which means mortgagors will offer fewer options to do so. They restrict penalties on borrowers who pay off their home loans early. These prepayment fees compensate lenders for the risk of lower returns on their loans. Without this protection they will either decline to offer loans to some borrowers or charge a higher interest rate.

The government’s proposed rules require high-risk customers in high-cost loan markets to meet with financial counselors before taking out a loan. The regulators also want to expand dramatically the number of mortgages classified as high cost. But financial counselors will have to be compensated, whether their advice is good or bad. The law deprives these consumers of the right to do their own homework.

Oddly, hidden on the new disclosure forms is the Annual Percentage Rate. For decades the APR was front and center on government-mandated disclosure documents. It is the single number that shows borrowers the cost of borrowing including such factors as the interest rate, certain fees, and the maturity structure of the loan.

The CFPB claims its consumer testing showed people didn’t understand the APR. Yet if someone is trying to compare two loans—one with a lower interest rate and $15,000 in fees, the other with lower fees but a higher interest rate—it’s not possible to determine which loan is cheaper without the APR.  The new rules do not attempt to generate a single number that can be used for comparison purposes and instead focus on various components of the loan such as fees, penalties, interest rates and maturity separately. This makes it harder, not easier, for borrowers to compare mortgage options.

Ultimately, we will be able to evaluate the impact of these new disclosures empirically by watching the results of the CFPB’s “experiment.”

Filed under: consumer financial protection bureau, consumer protection, economics

Yale Law Journal has published my article on “The Antitrust/ Consumer Protection Paradox: Two Policies At War With One Another.”  The hat tip to Robert Bork’s classic “Antitrust Paradox” in the title will be apparent to many readers.  The primary purpose of the article is to identify an emerging and serious conflict between antitrust and consumer protection law arising out of a sharp divergence in the economic approaches embedded within antitrust law with its deep attachment to rational choice economics on the one hand, and the new behavioral economics approach of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.  This intellectual rift brings with it serious – and detrimental – consumer welfare consequences.  After identifying the causes and consequences of that emerging rift, I explore the economic, legal, and political forces supporting the rift.

Here is the abstract:

The potential complementarities between antitrust and consumer protection law— collectively, “consumer law”—are well known. The rise of the newly established Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) portends a deep rift in the intellectual infrastructure of consumer law that threatens the consumer-welfare oriented development of both bodies of law. This Feature describes the emerging paradox that rift has created: a body of consumer law at war with itself. The CFPB’s behavioral approach to consumer protection rejects revealed preference— the core economic link between consumer choice and economic welfare and the fundamental building block of the rational choice approach underlying antitrust law. This Feature analyzes the economic, legal, and political institutions underlying the potential rise of an incoherent consumer law and concludes that, unfortunately, there are several reasons to believe the intellectual rift shaping the development of antitrust and consumer protection will continue for some time.

Go read the whole thing.

Filed under: antitrust, behavioral economics, bundled discounts, consumer financial protection bureau, consumer protection, economics, federal trade commission

Call for Papers

AALS Section on Insurance Law

“Insurance and Consumer Protection”

2013 AALS Annual Meeting
January 4-7, 2013
New Orleans, Louisiana

The AALS Section on Insurance Law will hold a program on Insurance and Consumer Protection during the AALS 2013 Annual Meeting in New Orleans. The program is scheduled for Sunday, January 6, 2013, from 10:30 AM to 12:15 PM. The program will feature a panel of leading research on consumer protection and insurance markets. Panelists scheduled to participate include: Shawn Cole (Harvard Business School), Kyle Logue (University of Michigan Law School), and Lauren Willis (Loyola Law School Los Angeles). We are looking to add one additional panelist through this Call for Papers.

Submissions: To be considered, a draft paper or proposal must be submitted by email to Joshua C. Teitelbaum, Program Chair, at [email protected]. A proposal must be comprehensive enough to allow for a meaningful evaluation of the proposed paper. Submissions must be in PDF format.

Deadline: The deadline for submissions is Tuesday, September 4, 2012. Decisions will be announced by Friday, September 28, 2012.

Eligibility: Full-time faculty members of AALS member law schools are eligible to submit. Faculty at fee-paid law schools; foreign, visiting and adjunct faculty members; graduate students; fellows; and non-law school faculty are not eligible to submit. Papers may already be accepted for publication, provided that the paper will not be published before the AALS meeting.

Expenses: The panelist selected through this Call for Papers will be responsible for paying his or her own annual meeting registration fee and travel expenses.

Inquiries: Inquiries about this Call for Papers may be submitted to Joshua C. Teitelbaum, Georgetown University Law Center, [email protected], (202) 661-6589.

Filed under: consumer protection

Last week the New York Times ran an article, “Building the Next Facebook a Tough Task in Europe“, by Eric Pfanner, discussing the lack of major high tech innovation in Europe.  Eric Pfanner discusses the importance of such investment, and then speculates on the reason for the lack of such innovation.  The ultimate conclusion is that there is a lack of venture capital in Europe for various cultural and historical reasons.  This explanation of course makes no sense.  Capital is geographically mobile and if European tech start ups were a profitable investment that Europeans were afraid to bankroll, American investors would be on the next plane.

Here is a better explanation.  In the name of “privacy,” the EU greatly restricts the use of consumer online  information.  Josh Lerner has a recent paper, “The Impact of Privacy Policy Changes on Venture Capital Investment in Online Advertising Companies” (based in part on the work of Avi Goldfarb and Catherine E. Tucker, “Privacy Regulation and Online Advertising“) finding that this restriction on the use of information is a large part of the explanation for the lack of tech investment in Europe.  Tom Lenard and I have written extensively about the costs of privacy regulation (for example, here) and this is just another example of these costs, although the costs are much greater in Europe than they are here (so far.)

Filed under: advertising, consumer protection, intellectual property, privacy, regulation, technology

In the past weeks, the chatter surrounding a possible FTC antitrust case against Google has risen in volume, thanks largely to the FTC’s hiring of litigator Beth Wilkinson.  The question remains, however, what this aggressive move portends and, more importantly, why the FTC is taking it.

Read the full piece here. 

Last week Thom posted about the government’s attempt to hide the cost of taxes and regulatory fees in commercial airfares. Apparently Spirit Airlines is highlighting another government-imposed cost of doing business by advertising a new $2/ticket fee that the airline has imposed. According a CNN report yesterday:

Spirit Airlines says a new federal regulation aimed at protecting consumers is forcing it to charge passengers an additional $2 for a ticket.

The fee, which Spirit calls the “Department of Transportation Unintended Consequences Fee,” has been added to each ticket effective immediately, according to Misty Pinson, a Spirit spokeswoman.

The new DOT regulation allows passengers to change flights within 24 hours of booking without paying a penalty. The airline says the regulation forces them to hold the seat for someone who may or may not want to fly. As a consequence, someone who really does want to fly wouldn’t be able to buy that seat because the airline is holding it for someone who might or might not end up taking it.

In short, DOT is requiring airlines to give consumers a real option to change their flight plans at zero cost within a 24 hour window. Spirit rightly recognizes that options have value. Not only is there a value to consumers in ‘buying’ such an option, there is a cost associated with providing the option; in this case, the opportunity cost of selling seats that may be held for someone that will exercise the option to cancel without a fee.

Obviously, DOT head Ray LaHood is unimpressed.

“This is just another example of the disrespect with which too many airlines treat their passengers,” Department of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said in an e-mailed statement. “Rather than coming up with new and unnecessary fees to charge their customers, airlines should focus on providing fair and transparent service — that’s what our common sense rules are designed to ensure.”

Perhaps Mr. LaHood doesn’t understand the concept of options and option value. The right, but not the obligation, to undertake an activity (particularly under pre-specified terms) is clearly an economic good.  The very notion that DOT’s new regulation is touted as “consumer friendly” recognizes that it creates additional value for consumers. That is, it’s giving something away that is of value…a property right to change one’s mind at zero cost. However, it is disingenuous of Mr. LaHood to object to the idea that giving away value imposes a cost on the one providing the value (and I don’t mean the DOT, but the airlines who must honor the consumer’s exercise of the option).

A better solution might be to require airlines to explicitly offer the option of a no-penalty change within a 24-hour window. Then consumers could choose whether to pay the fee and airlines might discover the true market value of that option. Spirits’ $2 may be too high. More likely, it’s too low. Many airlines already do offer the option of a no-fee cancellation and the fare differential is much higher than $2, but that option typically has a much longer maturity…any time after booking up until departure. A shorter maturity window should command a lower option value.

Spirit Airlines may be the epitome of nickle-and-diming air travel consumers, something many consumers (myself included in some cases) don’t appreciate. However, there is no denying that Spirit understands the nature of options and their value. And there’s also no denying that, based on its stock price over the past year, Spirit is doing at least as well as industry leaders in providing consumers value for the options they choose. Perhaps instead of casting aspersions, Mr LaHood and his staff should invite Spirit to teach them about this fairly fundamental concept of options and option value rather than imposing regulations with so little regard for their true costs.

Filed under: business, consumer protection, regulation, Sykuta Tagged: airlines, options, regulation

A new rule kicks in today requiring airlines to include all taxes and mandatory fees in their advertised fares.  The rule, part of a broader “passengers’ bill of rights”-type regulation promulgated by the Department of Transportation, is being sold as a proconsumer mandate:  It purportedly protects consumers from the sticker shock that results when they learn that the true consumer price for a flight, due to taxes and mandatory fees, is much higher than the advertised price.

But how consumer-friendly is this rule?  Won’t it be easier to raise taxes and fees when they aren’t presented as a line item, when consumers aren’t “startled” to see the exorbitant amount they’re paying for government services?  Value-added taxes (VATs), which tax the incremental value added at each stage of production and are generally included in the posted price for an item, have proven easier to raise than sales taxes, which are added at the register.  That’s because the latter are more visible so that increases are more likely to generate political opposition.  While VATs are common throughout Europe, they’re virtually non-existent in the United States, in part because we Americans have recognized the important role “tax sticker shock” plays in creating political accountability.

Consumer advocates, nevertheless, are lauding the new Department of Transportation rule.  They don’t seem to realize that higher taxes are bad for consumers and that taxes are more likely to rise when the government can hide them.  They also seem to care little about consumer sovereignty.  Don’t consumers have a right to know how much they’re paying to have scads of Homeland Security officers bark orders at them and gawk at their privates?

 

Filed under: advertising, consumer protection, regulation, taxes

The American Antitrust Institute has announced plans to draft a comprehensive set of jury instructions for antitrust trials.  According to AAI president Bert Foer:

In Sherman Act Section 1 and Section 2 civil cases, judges tend to gravitate towards the ABA Model Instructions as the gold standard for impartial instructions. … The AAI believes the ABA model instructions are, in some situations, confusing, out of date, or do not adequately effectuate the goals of the antitrust laws. To provide an alternative, the AAI will develop a set of jury instructions that can be widely disseminated to lawyers and judges.

Foer is certainly right about existing jury instructions.  They’re often confusing and frequently provide so little guidance that jurors are effectively invited simply to “pick a winner.”  Crafting clearer, more concrete jury instructions would benefit the antitrust enterprise and further AAI’s stated mission “to increase the role of competition [and] assure that competition works in the interests of consumers.”

But clarity alone is not enough.  Any new jury instructions should set forth (in clear terms) liability standards whose substance enhances the effectiveness of the antitrust.  Here’s where I worry about the AAI project.

Throughout its history, AAI has shown little regard for the inherent limits of antitrust.  Those limits arise because the antitrust laws (1) embody somewhat vague standards that factfinders must flesh out ex post (e.g., they forbid “unreasonable” restraints of trade and “unreasonably” exclusionary conduct by monopolists) and (2) are privately enforceable in lawsuits giving rise to treble damages.  The former feature ensures that courts, regulators, and business planners face difficulty in evaluating the legality of business practices.  The latter guarantees that they’re regularly called upon to do so.  It also discourages borderline practices that might wrongly be deemed, after the fact, to be anticompetitive.  Antitrust therefore creates significant “decision costs” (in both adjudication and counseling) and “error costs” (in the form of either market power resulting from improper acquittals or foregone efficiencies resulting from improper convictions and the chilling of procompetitive conduct).  Those decision and error costs constitute the limits of antitrust and are inexorable:

• you can’t decrease decision costs (by simplifying a liability rule) without increasing error costs (incorrect judgments and enhanced chilling effect);
• you can’t decrease error costs (by making the rule more nuanced in order to better separate pro- from anticompetitive conduct) without increasing decision costs; 
• you can’t reduce false acquittals (by easing the plaintiff’s proof burden or cutting back on affirmative defenses) without increasing false convictions, and vice-versa.

In light of this unhappy situation, antitrust liability standards should be crafted so as to minimize the sum of decision and error costs.  As I have recently explained, the Roberts Court has taken this tack in its eight major antitrust decisions.

AAI, by contrast, has shown little concern for false positives and seems to equate an effective antitrust regime with one that produces more liability.  Time and again, the Institute has advocated “pro-plaintiff” liability rules that threaten high error costs in the form of false convictions (and the chilling effect that follows).  In all but one of the Roberts Court’s antitrust decisions (which, as noted, are consistent with a “decision-theoretic” framework that would help minimize the sum of decision and error costs), AAI has advocated a pro-plaintiff position that the Supreme Court ultimately rejected.  (See AAI’s positions in Twombly, Leegin, Credit Suisse, Dagher, Weyerhaeuser, LinkLine, and Independent Ink.)  This is a stunningly bad record. 

Moreover, AAI remains out of antitrust’s mainstream (which now acknowledges antitrust’s inherent limits and the need to constrain error costs) on practices involving somewhat unsettled liability rules.  Consider, for example, AAI’s views on: 

• Resale Price Maintenance (RPM).  Even after Leegin abrogated the per se rule against minimum RPM, AAI urged courts to adopt a rule of reason that would burden a defendant with “justifying” any instance of RPM that results in an increase in consumer prices.  Such an approach is likely to generate excessive liability because all instances of RPM — even those aimed at such procompetitive effects as the elimination of free-riding, the facilitation of new entry, or encouraging “non-free-rideable” demand-enhancing services — involve an increase in consumer prices.  AAI’s preferred rule essentially amounts to a presumption of illegality for RPM.  As I explained in this article, such an approach would involve huge error costs (and certainly wouldn’t minimize the sum of decision and error costs).
   
• Loyalty Rebates.  Efficiency-minded antitrust scholars have generally concluded that there should be a safe harbor for single-product loyalty rebates resulting in an above-cost discounted price for the product at issue.  The leading case on loyalty rebates, the Eight Circuit’s Concord Boat decision, agrees.  The thinking behind such a safe harbor is that any equally efficient rival could match a defendant’s loyalty rebate that resulted in an above-cost discounted price; permitting liability on the basis of such a rebate would chill discounting and create a price umbrella for relatively inefficient rivals.  AAI, however, has urged courts to reject the safe harbor approved in Concord Boat.
   
• Bundled Discounts.   Efficiency-minded antitrust scholars have also approved a safe harbor for some sorts of multi-product or “bundled”
   discounts: such a discount should be legal if each product in the bundle is priced above cost when the entire amount of the bundled discount is attributed to that single product.  The Ninth Circuit approved this safe harbor in its PeaceHealth decision.  Again, the rationale behind the safe harbor is that an equally efficient, single-product rival could meet any bundled discount resulting an above-cost pricing under this so-called “discount attribution” test.  And again, AAI has opposed this safe harbor.

These are but a few examples of AAI’s wildly pro-plaintiff view of antitrust—a view that ultimately injures consumers by ignoring the error costs (e.g., thwarted procompetitive business practices) associated with false convictions.  So in the end, I’m a bit worried about AAI’s jury instruction project.  If the Institute can simply provide clarity without pushing substantive liability standards in its preferred, pro-plaintiff (error cost-insensitive) direction, antitrust will be better off because of its efforts.  But I’m not optimistic.

Filed under: antitrust, bundled discounts, business, consumer protection, error costs, exclusionary conduct, regulation, resale price maintenance

By now everyone is probably aware of the “tracking” of certain cellphones (Sprint, iPhone, T-Mobile, AT&T perhaps others) by a company called Carrier IQ.  There are lots of discussions available; a good summary is on one of my favorite websites, Lifehacker;  also here from CNET. Apparently the program gathers lots of anonymous data mainly for the purpose of helping carriers improve their service. Nonetheless, there are lawsuits and calls for the FTC to investigate.

Aside from the fact that the data is used only to improve service, it is also useful to ask just what people are afraid of.  Clearly the phone companies already have access to SMS messages if they want it since these go through the phone system anyway.  Moreover, of course, no person would see the data even if it were somehow collected.  The fear is perhaps that “… marketers can use that data to sell you more stuff or send targeted ads…” (from the Lifehacker site) but even if so, so what?  If apps are using data to try to sell you stuff that they think that you want, what is the harm? If you do want it, then the app has done you a service.  If you don’t want it, then you don’t buy it.  Ads tailored to your behavior are likely to be more useful than ads randomly assigned.

The Lifehacker story does use phrases like “freak people out” and “scary” and “creepy.”  But except for the possibility of being sold stuff, the story never explains what is harmful about the behavior.  As I have said before, I think the basic problem is that people cannot understand the notion that something is known but no person knows it.  If some server somewhere knows where your phone has been, so what?

The end result of this episode will probably be somewhat worse phone service.

Filed under: advertising, consumer protection, privacy, regulation, technology, telecommunications, wireless