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Full-Text Articles in Law
Expanding The Ban On Forced Arbitration To Race Claims, Michael Z. Green
Expanding The Ban On Forced Arbitration To Race Claims, Michael Z. Green
Faculty Scholarship
When Congress passed the Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Act (“EFASASHA”) in March 2022, it signaled a major retreat from the Supreme Court’s broad enforcement of agreements to force employees and consumers to arbitrate discrimination claims. But the failure to cover protected discriminatory classes other than sex, especially race, tempers any exuberance attributable to the passage of EFASASHA. This Article prescribes an approach for employees and consumers to rely upon EFASASHA as a tool to prevent both race and sex discrimination claims from being forced into arbitration by employers and companies. This approach relies upon procedural …
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 …
The Paradox Of Contracting In Markets, Robert E. Scott
The Paradox Of Contracting In Markets, Robert E. Scott
Faculty Scholarship
Traditional economic analysis distinguishes economic organization along three dimensions: firm, contract, and market. This categorization is misleading in any number of respects, but none more so than the assumption that contract and market are separate modes of exchange. In fact, other than barter, which is almost unknown in contemporary commercial transactions, every market transaction is implemented by contract. Thus, in markets the two modes of exchange are inextricably combined. Moreover, the vast majority of contract activity occurs in some form of market, so it does not require much loss of generalization to say that not only are contracts in all …
Economic Individualism And Preference Formation, Andrzej Rapaczynski
Economic Individualism And Preference Formation, Andrzej Rapaczynski
Faculty Scholarship
This note examines some issues involved in an attempt to go beyond the assumption, long-made by most economists, that people’s preferences are simply to be treated as “given” and that the principle of consumer sovereignty entails a refusal to consider some (or some people’s) revealed preferences as more authoritative than others. The most important break with that assumption has been the development of behavioral economics, which shows that people may not always know what they really want, and that economists have to develop a more critical approach, distinguishing people’s true preferences from those that are merely apparent. While this approach, …
Internet Giants As Quasi-Governmental Actors And The Limits Of Contractual Consent, Nancy Kim, D.A. Jeremy Telman
Internet Giants As Quasi-Governmental Actors And The Limits Of Contractual Consent, Nancy Kim, D.A. Jeremy Telman
Faculty Scholarship
Although the government’s data-mining program relied heavily on information and technology that the government received from private companies, relatively little of the public outrage generated by Edward Snowden’s revelations was directed at those private companies. We argue that the mystique of the Internet giants and the myth of contractual consent combine to mute criticisms that otherwise might be directed at the real data-mining masterminds. As a result, consumers are deemed to have consented to the use of their private information in ways that they would not agree to had they known the purposes to which their information would be put …
Copyright’S Mercantilist Turn, Glynn S. Lunney Jr
Copyright’S Mercantilist Turn, Glynn S. Lunney Jr
Faculty Scholarship
Over the last twenty years, arguments for broader copyright have taken an increasingly mercantilist turn. Unable to establish that broader copyright will lead to more or better original works, as the Constitution and the traditional economic framework require, proponents have begun arguing for broader copyright on the basis of revenue and jobs. Rampant unauthorized copying is theft or piracy, proponents insist, depriving copyright owners of revenue and destroying jobs. Whether or not it leads to more or better works, broader copyright will increase revenue to copyright owners and thus increase employment in the copyright industries. This increased employment, on its …
A Tale Of Two Debtors: Bankruptcy Disparities By Race, Rory Van Loo
A Tale Of Two Debtors: Bankruptcy Disparities By Race, Rory Van Loo
Faculty Scholarship
This article offers the first quantitative evidence on race and bankruptcy. Minority debtors fare worse overall in bankruptcy — blacks are 40% and Hispanics 43% less likely than whites to receive a discharge in Chapter 13 after controlling for variables such as education, income, and employment. While the data do not allow for causal inference, Chapter 13 trustees were twice as likely to have made a motion to dismiss even against black debtors who ultimately completed their multi-year bankruptcy plans than against similar white debtors. The paper also indicates that a lack of attorney representation by minority debtors may make …
Walmart's Other Woman Problem: Sprawl And Work-Family Balancing, Katharine B. Silbaugh
Walmart's Other Woman Problem: Sprawl And Work-Family Balancing, Katharine B. Silbaugh
Faculty Scholarship
Wal-Mart is often said to be bad for its workers, including those workers in its production chain in developing countries, and good for its consumers, most of whom are women. Most people argue that its consumers gain from low prices. This brief essay argues that consumers absorb a share of the costs of Wal-Mart's low prices. Contrary to intuition, Wal-Mart may increase significantly the financial and time pressures on its shoppers, the majority of whom can ill-afford increases in either. Most small retail is sited to take advantage of travel routines people have already established to meet their residential and …