Credit card transactions cost American merchants six times as much as cash transactions. Why, then, do consumers pay the same price for purchases, regardless of the means of payment?The answer lies in a set of credit card network rules known as merchant restraints. Merchant restraints forbid...

Transparent pricing is a prerequisite for an efficient, competitive market and responsible consumer behavior. If the card industry were required to price its products in a straightforward manner, and it were less costly for consumers to switch cards, deceptive practices would be harder to...

The creation of a market in bankruptcy claims is the single most important development in the bankruptcy world since the Bankruptcy Code’s enactment in 1978. Claims trading has revolutionized bankruptcy by making it a much more market-driven process. The limited scholarly literature on claims...

Asset bubbles come and go. Only the housing bubble, however, brought the economy to its knees. Why? What makes housing uniquely a cause of macroeconomic risk? This article examines the workings of the housing market as well as theories and empirical evidence about the housing bubble. It explains...

Merchants pay banks a fee on every credit card transaction. These credit card transactions cost American merchants an average of six times the total cost of cash transactions. The variation in fees among credit cards is also large, with some cards, such as rewards cards, costing merchants twice...

Who pays for credit card rewards? This Article demonstrates empirically that credit card rewards programs are funded in part by a highly regressive, lt;igt;sub rosalt;/igt; subsidization of affluent credit consumers by poor cash consumers. In its worst form, food stamp recipients are subsidizing...

This Article argues that a principal-agent problem plays a critical role in the current foreclosure crisis.A traditional mortgage lender decides whether to foreclose or restructure a defaulted loan based on its evaluation of the comparative net present value of those options. Most residential...

Courts have repeatedly stated that equitable subordination is a compensatory remedy. This view is demonstrably mistaken; if equitable subordination is compensatory, only injured creditors, and not trustees or debtors in possession, would have Constitutional standing to bring equitable...

This Critique takes issue with four of the main assertions of the American Bankers Association's Study on Credit Card Regulation. First, this Critique addresses the ABA Study's claim that credit card pricing is risk-based and demonstrates that only certain elements of card pricing are marginally...