Law Commons^™

The Economics Of Repair: Fixing Planned Obsolescence By Activating The Right To Repair In India, Dunia Zongwe, Mahantesh Gs, Mamatha R

International Journal on Consumer Law and Practice

This paper examines the lack of a Right to Repair (R2R) legislation in India, particularly in the technology sector, and proposes key principles for an optimal Right to Repair Act based on competition economics and consumer choice. In the current scenario, electronic devices are often designed with planned obsolescence, leading to limited lifespans and encouraging a cycle of consumption and disposal, which negatively impacts the economy, society, and the environment. The global R2R campaign aims to balance societal rights and corporate interests by empowering consumers with the right to repair their devices.

Our research is the first to develop core …

The Law And Economics Of Consumer Debt Collection And Its Regulation, Todd J. Zywicki

Todd J. Zywicki

This article reviews the law and economics of consumer debt collection and its regulation a topic that has taken on added urgency in light of the announcement by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that it is considering new regulations on the subject. Although stricter regulation of permissible debt collection practices can benefit those consumers who are in default and increase demand for credit by consumers, overly-restrictive regulation will result in higher interest rates and less access to credit for consumers, especially higher-risk consumers. Regulation of particular practices may also have the unintended consequence of providing incentives for creditors to more …

Health Care And The Balance Billing Problem: The Solution Is The Common Law Of Contracts And Strengthening The Free Market For Health Care., George A. Nation Iii

George A Nation III

A large and growing group of insured patients is being unfairly burdened by hospitals’ exorbitant chargemaster prices. The burden is brought to bear on these patients through a process known as balance billing. For a variety of reasons hospital networks are becoming narrower as hospital systems contract with fewer insurers, and as a result, more and more patients are receiving balance bills. The practice of balance billing puts upward pressure on health care prices in general. That is, this practice leads to higher prices across the board for the uninsured, the out-of-network insured and even the in-network insured. This article …

The High Price Of Poverty: A Study Of How The Majority Of Current Court System Procedures For Collecting Court Costs And Fees, As Well As Fines, Have Failed To Adhere To Established Precedent And The Constitutional Guarantees They Advocate., Trevor J. Calligan

Trevor J Calligan

No abstract provided.

Dirty Debts Sold Dirt Cheap, Dalie Jimenez

Dalie Jimenez

More than 77 million Americans have a debt in collections. Many of these debts will be sold to debt buyers for pennies, or fractions of pennies, on the dollar. This Article details the perilous path that debts travel as they move through the collection ecosystem. Using a unique dataset of 84 consumer debt purchase and sale agreement, it examines the manner in which debts are sold, oftentimes as simple data on a spreadsheet, devoid of any documentary evidence. It finds that in many contracts, sellers disclaim all warranties about the underlying debts sold or the information transferred. Sellers also sometimes …

The Law And Economics Of Microfinance, Katherine Helen Mary Hunt

Katherine Helen Mary Hunt

Financial inclusion may be jargon which appeals to international donors and academics, but the strategic implementation in developing countries is often based on international du jour priorities, such as microfinance. The topic of microfinance is highly debated in the academic literature, although little empirical work has been published. Further, no literature to date has considered microfinance from a law and economics perspective. This paper seeks to contribute to the gap in the literature by considering how microfinance has evolved to address the credit market failure, and how microfinance regulation should be designed to promote long term financial inclusion via financially …

Intermediaries Revisited: Is Efficient Certification Consistent With Profit Maximization?, Jonathan M. Barnett

Jonathan M Barnett

Private certification mechanisms are a key component of the regulatory infrastructure in the financial sector and other commercial settings. It is generally assumed that certification intermediaries have profit-based incentives to deliver accurate information to the certified market. But this view does not account for repeated failures in certification markets. Those failures can be explained by an inherent defect in the incentive structure of certification intermediaries: entry barriers both support and undermine the consistent supply of accurate information to the certified market. Certification markets tend to converge on a handful of providers protected by switching costs, product opacity and reputational noise. …

Testimony To The Committee On Financial Institutions, Kansas House Of Representatives March 13, 2014, Brian M. Mccall

Brian M McCall

This document contains the text of testimony given before the Committee on Financial Institutions, Kansas House of Representatives March 13, 2014, in a hearing to address potential changes to the regulation of payday lending in Kansas.

Entender Los Males Económicos Modernos A La Luz De La Doctrina Social Católica, Brian M. Mccall

Brian M McCall

In a general sense, St. Thomas Aquinas predicted the paralysis and chaos of the financial and economic systems in America and Europe which occurred in 2008, when he predicted that in a society where unjust exchanges dominate, eventually all exchanges will cease. St. Thomas also points out that although human law cannot prohibit all injustice, society cannot escape the consequences of transgressing the divine law which leaves “nothing unpunished.” Thus, at least part of the explanation for that crisis whose effects remain with us today lies in continuous violations of natural justice by our economic system. Neither one product nor …

Sacred Cows, Holy Wars: Exploring The Limits Of Law In The Regulation Of Raw Milk And Kosher Meat, Kenneth Lasson

Kenneth Lasson

SACRED COWS, HOLY WARS Exploring the Limits of Law in the Regulation of Raw Milk and Kosher Meat By Kenneth Lasson Abstract In a free society law and religion seldom coincide comfortably, tending instead to reflect the inherent tension that often resides between the two. This is nowhere more apparent than in America, where the underlying principle upon which the first freedom enunciated by the Constitution’s Bill of Rights is based ‒ the separation of church and state – is conceptually at odds with the pragmatic compromises that may be reached. But our adherence to the primacy of individual rights …

What Do We Worry About When We Worry About Price Discrimination? The Law And Ethics Of Using Personal Information For Pricing, Akiva A. Miller

Akiva A Miller

New information technologies have dramatically increased sellers’ ability to engage in retail price discrimination. Debates over using personal information for price discrimination frequently treat it as a single problem, and are not sufficiently sensitive to the variety of price discrimination practices, the different kinds of information they require in order to succeed, and the different ethical concerns they raise. This paper explores the ethical and legal debate over regulating price discrimination facilitated by consumers’ personal information. Various kinds of “privacy remedies”—self-regulation, technological fixes, state regulation, and legislating private causes of legal action—each have their place. By drawing distinctions between various …

Efficient Breach In The Common European Sales Law (Cesl), Wenqing Liao

Wenqing Liao

In the classic economic theory, it is suggested that contract law should be structured in such a way that efficient breaches (i.e. those increasing social welfare) would be promoted. The default remedy of expectation damages was justified on this cognition. Nowadays, more and more suspects and critiques are raised against the so called simple efficient breach model. The aim of this paper is to re-sketch the theory of efficient breach and to compare the consequences resulting from economic analysis with the remedy rules of the Common European Sales Law (CESL). It is proposed that the doctrine of efficient breach has …

Licensure Of Health Care Professionals: The Consumer's Case For Abolition, Charles H. Baron

Charles H. Baron

While state medical licensure laws ostensibly are intended to promote worthwhile goals, such as the maintenance of high standards in health care delivery, this Article argues that these laws in practice are detrimental to consumers. The Article takes the position that licensure contributes to high medical care costs and stifles competition, innovation and consumer autonomy. It concludes that delicensure would expand the range of health services available to consumers and reduce patient dependency, and that these developments would tend to make medical practice more satisfying to consumers and providers of health care services.

Snopa And The Ppa: Do You Know What It Means For You? If Snopa (Social Networking Online Protection Act) Or Ppa (Password Protection Act) Do Not Pass, The Snooping Could Cause You Trouble, Angela Goodrum

Angela Goodrum

No abstract provided.

Standard Contract Clauses As Public Goods: A New Way Of Understanding Inefficient Clauses, Enrico Baffi

enrico baffi

The aim of this work is to show how it is possible to identify market failures other than those traditionally identified by lawyers and law and economics scholars to justify the mandatory provisions of contracts between professionals and consumers and the equally mandatory provisions governing the abuse of economic dependency. This is a new approach that can be extended to other provisions and appears to rest on fairly solid microeconomic foundations. There is no doubt, however, that many criticisms can be leveled against it. Very briefly, I shall argue that the production of clauses characterized by being rather vague, indeterminate …

Contract Clauses As Public Goods: A New Way Of Understanding Inefficient Clauses, Enrico Baffi

enrico baffi

he aim of this work is to show how it is possible to identify market failures other than those traditionally identified by lawyers and law and economics scholars to justify the mandatory provisions of contracts between professionals and consumers and the equally mandatory provisions governing the abuse of economic dependency. This is a new approach that can be extended to other provisions and appears to rest on fairly solid microeconomic foundations. There is no doubt, however, that many criticisms can be leveled against it. Very briefly, I shall argue that the production of clauses characterized by being rather vague, indeterminate …

La Calidad De Los Productos En El Marco Del Estatuto Del Consumidor En Colombia: Aproximación Crítica Desde La Teoría Microeconómica., Daniel Monroy

Daniel A Monroy C

El presente escrito presenta una aproximación crítica al Estatuto del Consumidor en Colombia (Ley 1480 de 2011), específicamente en lo relacionado con la definición y la aplicación del término “calidad” de los productos especificado en la misma norma, haciendo uso para los efectos de algunas premisas y criterios normativos deducibles de la teoría microeconómica. El documento demuestra que, si bien en varios aspectos, la aproximación jurídica que se le da a la noción de “calidad” se alinea adecuadamente con ciertos criterios deducibles de la teoría económica, en otros aspectos entra en contradicción con la misma, particularmente por el hecho que …

Standard Contract Clauses As Public Goods: A New Approach, Enrico Baffi

enrico baffi

The aim of this work is to show how it is possible to identify market failures other than those traditionally identified by lawyers and law and economics scholars to justify the mandatory provisions of contracts between professionals and consumers and the equally mandatory provisions governing the abuse of economic dependency. This is a new approach that can be extended to other provisions and appears to rest on fairly solid microeconomic foundations. There is no doubt, however, that many criticisms can be leveled against it. Very briefly, I shall argue that the production of clauses characterized by being rather vague, indeterminate …

Standard Contract Clauses. A Different Way To Consider This Problem, Enrico Baffi

enrico baffi

The aim of this work is to show how it is possible to identify market failures other than those traditionally identified by lawyers and law and economics scholars to justify the mandatory provisions of contracts between professionals and consumers and the equally mandatory provisions governing the abuse of economic dependency. This is a new approach that can be extended to other provisions and appears to rest on fairly solid microeconomic foundations. There is no doubt, however, that many criticisms can be leveled against it. Very briefly, I shall argue that the production of clauses characterized by being rather vague, indeterminate …

Standard Contract Clauses As Public Goods: A New Way To Approach The Problem, Enrico Baffi

enrico baffi

The aim of this work is to show how it is possible to identify market failures other than those traditionally identified by lawyers and law and economics scholars to justify the mandatory provisions of contracts between professionals and consumers and the equally mandatory provisions governing the abuse of economic dependency. This is a new approach that can be extended to other provisions and appears to rest on fairly solid microeconomic foundations. There is no doubt, however, that many criticisms can be leveled against it. Very briefly, I shall argue that the production of clauses characterized by being rather vague, indeterminate …

Contracting I The -Modern Woerld, Enrico Baffi

enrico baffi

In this paper I want to show that the change that we observe in the way of contracting do not depend by the market powers that firms would have obtained, but it is a phenomenon due to the change in relative costs of activities. There are activities that are labor intensive that must be abandoned in favor of activities that capital intensive, and there are activities that are time consuming that the people do not want to bea, as reading all the contract clauses of a standard form contract, that determine the necessity, probably, if there is not a state …

Contracting In Modern World, Enrico Baffi

enrico baffi

In this paper I try explore some of the basic features of modern mass contracting. In my opinion, there are basically four characteristics of modern mass contracting: a)he reduced negotiations; b) the dissemination of standard form contracts; c) the presence of abusive clauses; d) and the recapitulation of the contract and its execution in a single act of stipulation. All the changes are the consequences in the changes of relative costs of activities: a) The reduction in negotiations is the result first of all of the costs that this activity requires and of the costs required to manage personalized contracts; …

Mental Budget And Inefficient Clauses: A Lesson From Behavioral Law Nand Economics, Enrico Baffi

enrico baffi

This paper is an attempt to highlight how clauses, which are traditionally considered to be inefficient, may actually be desired by consumers. This anomaly originates in the fact that each individual builds a mental budget by dividing the money he has among the needs he intends to satisfy. According to consumers’ reasoning, money is not fungible, in the sense that amounts cannot be transferred from one expenditure to another. Consumers who behave in this way may sometimes find that they have depleted the amount they budgeted for an item while wanting to buy more of it. Since additional time, efforts …

Regulation Not Prohibition: The Comparative Case Against The Insurable Interest Doctrine, Sharo Michael Atmeh

Sharo M Atmeh

American law requires an insurable interest—a pecuniary or affective stake in the subject of an insurance policy—as a predi-cate to properly obtaining insurance. In theory, the rule prevents both wagering on individual lives and moral hazard. In practice, the doctrine is avoided by complex insurance transaction structuring to effectuate both origination and transfers of insurance by individuals without an insurable interest. This paper argues that it is time to ab-andon the insurable interest doctrine. As both the English and Aus-tralian experiences indicate, elimination of the insurable interest doctrine will have little detrimental pecuniary effect on the insurance industry, while freeing …

Antitrust Review Of The At&T/T-Mobile Transaction, Maurice E. Stucke, Allen Grunes

College of Law Faculty Scholarship

In this Essay, we review AT&T Inc.’s proposed $39 billion acquisition of T-Mobile USA, Inc., under federal merger law, under the U.S. Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission’s 2010 Horizontal Merger Guidelines, and with a focus on possible remedies. We find, under a rule of law approach, that the proposed acquisition is presumptively anticompetitive, and the merging parties in their public disclosures have failed to overcome this presumption. Next we find that under the Merger Guidelines, there is reason to believe that the transaction may result in higher prices to consumers under several different plausible theories. Finally, we turn …

Relational Contract Theory And Management Contracts: A Paradigm For The Application Of The Theory Of The Norms, Michael Diathesopoulos

Michael Diathesopoulos

This paper examines management contracts as a paradigm for the application of relational contracts theory and especially of the theory of contractual and relational norms. This theory, deriving from Macauley's implications, but structured and analysed by I.R. MacNeil gives us a framework for the explanation and understanding of contractual obligations and business relations' rules and practice. After presenting the key literature about the norms theory and especially defining the content of MacNeil's norms, we define management contracts as relations, characterised by a high relational element and we explain why, investigating all their features, which make them a suitable object for …

Situating Emotion: A Critical Realist View Of Emotion And Nonconscious Cognitive Processes For Law And Legal Theory, David J. Arkush

David J. Arkush

This Article attempts to clarify legal thinking about emotion in decision making. It surveys evidence from psychology and neuroscience on the extensive role that emotion and related nonconscious cognitive processes play in human behavior, then evaluates the treatment of emotion in three legal views of decision making: rational choice theory, behavioral economics, and cultural cognition theory. The Article concludes that each theory is mistaken to treat emotion mostly as a decision objective rather than a part of the decision-making process and, indeed, to treat it as a force that mostly compromises that process. The Article introduces the view that emotion …

A Complete Property Right Amendment, John H. Ryskamp

ExpressO

The trend of the eminent domain reform and "Kelo plus" initiatives is toward a comprehensive Constitutional property right incorporating the elements of level of review, nature of government action, and extent of compensation. This article contains a draft amendment which reflects these concerns.

Rent Concessions And Illegal Contract Penalties In Texas, James P. George

ExpressO

This article discusses penalty damages in residential leases in Texas. The sales pitch is a rent concession which is later reimposed if the buyer breaches. In contracts where the reimposed penalty reimburses the seller well beyond the consideration anticipated in the normal performance of the agreement, the reimposed discount is an illegal penalty. These contracts are pervasive but for the most part go unchalllenged.

Rent Concessions, Reimposable Discounts, And The Return Of Medieval Contract Penalties, James P. George

ExpressO

This article discusses penalty damages in consumer contracts. It focuses on rent concessions in apartment leases, and includes lesser discussions of deferred payments and interest in the purchase of cars, furniture and appliances. The sales pitch is a deferral or discount which is later reimposed if the buyer breaches, with some contracts keying on small breaches such as late payment. In contracts where the reimposed penalty reimburses the seller well beyond the consideration anticipated in the normal performance of the agreement, the reimposed discount is an illegal penalty. These contracts are pervasive but for the most part go unchalllenged.