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Full-Text Articles in Law
Discrimination On Wheels: How Big Data Uses License Plate Surveillance To Put The Brakes On Disadvantaged Drivers, Nicole Mcconlogue
Discrimination On Wheels: How Big Data Uses License Plate Surveillance To Put The Brakes On Disadvantaged Drivers, Nicole Mcconlogue
Faculty Scholarship
As scholarly discourse increasingly raises concerns about the negative societal effects of “fintech,” “dirty data,” and “technochauvinism,” a growing technology provides an instructive illustration of all three of these problems. Surveillance software companies are using automated license plate reader (ALPR) technology to develop predictive analytical tools. In turn, software companies market those tools to auto financers and insurers as a risk assessment input to evaluate consumers seeking to buy a car. Proponents of this technology might argue that more in-formation about consumer travel habits will result in more accurate and individualized risk predictions, potentially increasing vehicle ownership among marginalized groups. …
Algorithms In Business, Merchant-Consumer Interactions, & Regulation, Tabrez Y. Ebrahim
Algorithms In Business, Merchant-Consumer Interactions, & Regulation, Tabrez Y. Ebrahim
Faculty Scholarship
The shift towards the use of algorithms in business has transformed merchant–consumer interactions. Products and services are increasingly tailored for consumers through algorithms that collect and analyze vast amounts of data from interconnected devices, digital platforms, and social networks. While traditionally merchants and marketeers have utilized market segmentation, customer demographic profiles, and statistical approaches, the exponential increase in consumer data and computing power enables them to develop and implement algorithmic techniques that change consumer markets and society as a whole. Algorithms enable targeting of consumers more effectively, in real-time, and with high predictive accuracy in pricing and profiling strategies. In …
Broadening Consumer Law: Competition, Protection, And Distribution, Rory Van Loo
Broadening Consumer Law: Competition, Protection, And Distribution, Rory Van Loo
Faculty Scholarship
Policymakers and scholars have in distributional conversations traditionally ignored consumer laws, defined as the set of consumer protection, antitrust, and entry barrier laws that govern consumer transactions. Consumer law is overlooked partly because tax law is cast as the most efficient way to redistribute. Another obstacle is that consumer law research speaks to microeconomic and siloed contexts—deceptive fees by Wells Fargo or a proposed merger between Comcast and Time Warner Cable. Even removing millions of dollars of deceptive credit card fees across the nation seems trivial compared to the trillion-dollar growth in income inequality that has sparked concern in recent …
Consumer Protection—Exploring Private Causes Of Action For Victims Of Data Breaches, Justin H. Dion, Nicholas M. Smith
Consumer Protection—Exploring Private Causes Of Action For Victims Of Data Breaches, Justin H. Dion, Nicholas M. Smith
Faculty Scholarship
Data breaches are becoming a norm in modern life. Every year it seems that bigger and bigger attacks are launched, and more and more individuals are harmed. The law has responded by increasing states’ ability to prosecute cybercriminals. A glaring hole exists in this protection though. The state is largely an unharmed party. The real harm is done to individual citizens affected by the breaches. Their data is compromised, their identities are stolen, and their livelihoods are placed at risk. This Article will analyze the issue and propose a solution for increased consumer protection in addition to the current criminal …
Letter To The Hon. Sen. Orrt (Nys Senate) Regarding Litigation Finance (Lawsuit Lending) (2018), Maya Steinitz
Letter To The Hon. Sen. Orrt (Nys Senate) Regarding Litigation Finance (Lawsuit Lending) (2018), Maya Steinitz
Faculty Scholarship
Following testimony to the New York State Senate's Standing Committee on Consumer Protection (available on SSRN and YouTube), Professor Steinitz was asked to elaborate on her recommendation for a statutory minimum recovery requirement to protect consumers of litigation financing. Enclosed is her response to this inquiry.
Consumer Bitcredit And Fintech Lending, Christopher K. Odinet
Consumer Bitcredit And Fintech Lending, Christopher K. Odinet
Faculty Scholarship
The digital economy is changing everything, including how we borrow money. In the wake of the 2008 crisis, banks pulled back in their lending and, as a result, many consumers and small businesses found themselves unable to access credit. A wave of online firms called fintech lenders have filled the space left vacant by traditional financial institutions. These platforms are fast making antiques out of many mainstream lending practices, such as long paper applications and face-to-face meetings. Instead, through underwriting by automation — utilizing big data (including social media data) and machine learning — loan processing that once took days …
Helping Buyers Beware: The Need For Supervision Of Big Retail, Rory Van Loo
Helping Buyers Beware: The Need For Supervision Of Big Retail, Rory Van Loo
Faculty Scholarship
Since the financial crisis, consumer regulators have closely supervised sellers of credit cards and home mortgages to stamp out anticompetitive practices. Supervision programs give financial regulators ongoing access to sophisticated firms' internal data outside the litigation process. This often enables examiners to identify and correct harmful conduct more rapidly and effectively than would be possible using publicly available information and cumbersome legal tools.
Consumers spend four times more on retail goods than on financial products. The retail sector’s dominant firms — such as Amazon, Walmart, Unilever, and Kraft — employ large teams of quantitative experts armed with advanced information technologies, …
Putting Disclosure To The Test: Toward Better Evidence-Based Policy, Talia B. Gillis
Putting Disclosure To The Test: Toward Better Evidence-Based Policy, Talia B. Gillis
Faculty Scholarship
Financial disclosures no longer enjoy the immunity from criticism they once had. While disclosures remain the hallmark of numerous areas of regulation, there is increasing skepticism as to whether disclosures are understood by consumers and do in fact improve consumer welfare. Debates on the virtues of disclosures overlook the process by which regulators continue to mandate disclosures. This article fills this gap by analyzing the testing of proposed disclosures, which is an increasingly popular way for regulators to establish the benefits of disclosure. If the testing methodology is misguided then the premise on which disclosures are adopted is flawed, leaving …
Breaking Up Payday: Anti-Agglomeration Zoning & Consumer Welfare, Sheila R. Foster
Breaking Up Payday: Anti-Agglomeration Zoning & Consumer Welfare, Sheila R. Foster
Faculty Scholarship
In the last decade, dozens of local governments have enacted zoning ordinances designed to limit the concentration of payday lenders and other alternative financial services providers (AFSPs), such as check-cashing businesses and auto title loan shops, in their communities. The main impetus for these ordinances is to shield economically vulnerable residents from the industry’s lending practices in the absence of sufficiently aggressive federal and state consumer protection regulation. This Essay casts considerable doubt on whether zoning is the appropriate regulatory tool to achieve the consumer protection and welfare goals animating these ordinances. The author’s analysis of the aftermath of payday …
Balancing Of Markets, Litigation And Regulation, Keith N. Hylton, Larry E. Ribstein, Paul H. Rubin, Todd J. Zywicki
Balancing Of Markets, Litigation And Regulation, Keith N. Hylton, Larry E. Ribstein, Paul H. Rubin, Todd J. Zywicki
Faculty Scholarship
In addition to judicial education programs that the Law and Economics Center conducts, we also have a division that focuses on public policy research, known as the Searle Civil Justice Institute. In November, we held a public policy roundtable where we commissioned a variety of research and brought together a group of experts, both academic and practitioner experts, to discuss the issue of balancing the appropriate roles of markets, litigation, and regulation. And the notion there is that each one - markets, litigation, and regulation - can and probably should play a role in addressing various consumer harms.
Consumer Complaints And The Ontario Business Practices Act: An Empirical Study, Neil Vidmar, Joseph Samuels
Consumer Complaints And The Ontario Business Practices Act: An Empirical Study, Neil Vidmar, Joseph Samuels
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Technology Assessment And Social Control, Michael S. Baram
Technology Assessment And Social Control, Michael S. Baram
Faculty Scholarship
The emerging concepts of corporate responsibility and technology assessment are, to a considerable extent, responses to problems arising from technological developments and their applications by industry and government. These problems appear in the relatively discrete sectors of consumer protection and occupational safety and in the diffuse sectors of community quality of life and the national and international environments.