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Can Cost-Benefit Analysis Help Consumer Protection Laws? Or At Least Benefit Analysis?, Jeff Sovern
Can Cost-Benefit Analysis Help Consumer Protection Laws? Or At Least Benefit Analysis?, Jeff Sovern
Faculty Publications
Cost-benefit analysis is often troubling to consumer advocates. But this Article argues that in some circumstances it may help consumers. The Article gives several examples of supposed consumer protections that have protected consumers poorly, if at all. It also argues that before adopting consumer protections, lawmakers should first attempt to determine whether the protections will work. The Article suggests that because lawmakers are unlikely to adopt multiple solutions to the same problem, one cost of ineffective consumer protections is a kind of opportunity cost, in that ineffective consumer protections might appear to make adoption of effective ones unnecessary. Ironically, such …
Written Notice Of Cooling-Off Periods: A Forty-Year Natural Experiment In Illusory Consumer Protection And The Relative Effectiveness Of Oral And Written Disclosures, Jeff Sovern
Faculty Publications
For more than forty years, a standard tool in the consumer protection toolbox has been the cooling-off period. Federal statutes, state statutes, and federal regulations all oblige merchants to give consumers three days to rescind certain contracts. This paper reports on a survey of businesses subject to such cooling-off periods. The study has two principal findings. First, the respondents indicated that few consumers rescind their purchases. Thus, the study raises doubts about whether cooling-off periods benefit consumers or whether they provide only illusory consumer protection. The article also offers speculations about why cooling-off periods have been of such little value …