An online provider’s termination of a user’s online account can be a major-and potentially even life-changing-event for the user. Account termination exiles the user from a virtual place the user wanted to be; termination disrupts any social network relationship ties in that venue, and...

Merchant Authorized Consumer Cash Substitutes (MACCS) have existed in one form or another for hundreds of years although without a generic name. At nineteenth century American railroad construction sites far from established towns, companies paid employees with “scrip.” Coca Cola, beginning...

This paper aims to inform banks, consumers, researchers, consumer protection organizations and other stakeholders for the importance of these regulations as well as raising some other related issues to be addressed for the protection of mortgage loan consumers. In 2014, EU political reasoning...

Confidence seems to replace certain knowledge and the necessity for specific information. It simplifies economical processes and procedures, it motivates investing, and obviously, it enhances welfare — if it was missing, innumerable dealings would not be made. Consequently, if confidence among...

Recent advances in advertising technology have lead to the development of “native advertising”, which is a format of advertising that mimics the other non-sponsored content on the medium. While advertisers have rapidly embraced the format on a variety of digital media, regulators have...

Forced arbitration clauses have become almost unavoidable in contracts for financial services and products ranging form credit cards to private student loans. This report examines how the financial services industry uses these clauses to defeat consumers' rights and evade accountability for...

We analyze 15.6 million storefront payday loans made to 1.8 million unique borrowers in 2013 to examine payday loan terms and usage. We find that loan prices and loan amounts are generally not at state-mandated maximum levels. For the 30 states in our sample, we find that the number of loans per...

Moderne Marktordnungen schützen den Verbraucher vor Schäden und sichern den Leistungswettbewerb und die Funktionsfähigkeit von Märkten. Wettbewerbsorientierte Verbraucherpolitik und verbraucherorientierte Wettbewerbspolitik ergänzen sich dabei. Die Verhaltensökonomik zeigt allerdings, dass...

Limits on consumer attention give firms incentives to manipulate prospective buyers’ allocation of attention. This paper models such attention manipulation and shows that it limits the ability of disclosure regulation to improve consumer welfare. Competitive information supply, from firms...

This Article considers the spillover effects of trademarks - in particular, brand spillovers, which occur when consumer interest in a trademark increases the profits of third parties who do not own the trademark. Using techniques such as loss leaders and shelf space adjacency, retailers...