Law Commons^™

The Law, Marketing And Behavioral Economics Of Consumer Rebates, Matthew A. Edwards

ExpressO

This paper deals with mail-in consumer rebates — a significant, yet controversial marketing practices that has generated thousands of consumer complaints, inspired countless articles in major periodicals, and begun to attract the interest of state and federal legislators. The paper first aims to provide an understanding of the purposes of consumer rebate offerings. It then surveys the main categories of consumer rebate complaints, including that firms impose onerous rebate redemption requirements and that they fail to pay rebate rewards in a timely manner. The paper draws on recent marketing, psychological and behavioral economics research to address the potent claim that …

Valuing Cultural Differences In Behavioral Economics, Justin D. Levinson, Kaiping Peng

ExpressO

Behavioral economic research has tended to ignore the role of cultural differences in economic decision-making. The authors suggest that a systematic bias affects existing behavioral economic theory-- cognitive biases are often assumed to be universal. To examine how cultural background informs economic decision-making, and to test framing effects, morality effects, and out-group effects in a cross-cultural study, the authors conducted an experiment in the United States and China. The experiment was designed to test cultural and cognitive effects on a fundamental economic phenomenon-- how people estimate the financial values of objects over time.

Results of the experiment demonstrated dramatic cultural …

Price, Path & Pride: Third-Party Closing Opinion Practice Among U.S. Lawyers (A Preliminary Investigation), Jonathan C. Lipson

ExpressO

This article presents the first in-depth exploration of third-party closing opinions, a common but curious – and potentially troubling -- feature of U.S. business law practice. Third-party closing opinions are letters delivered at the closing of most large transactions by the attorney for one party (e.g., the borrower) to the other party (e.g., the lender) offering limited assurance that the transaction will have legal force and effect.

Hundreds, if not thousands, of legal opinions are delivered every week. Yet, lawyers often complain that they create needless risk and cost, and produce little benefit. Closing opinions thus pose a basic question: …