Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
- Publication
- File Type
Articles 1 - 3 of 3
Full-Text Articles in Law
Behavioral Exploitation Antitrust In Consumer Subprime Mortgage Lending, Max Huffman, Daniel Heidtke
Behavioral Exploitation Antitrust In Consumer Subprime Mortgage Lending, Max Huffman, Daniel Heidtke
Max Huffman
We analyze whether antitrust might provide an alternative and perhaps superior approach to regulating consumer subprime mortgage lending. Behavioral exploitation antitrust targets commercial conduct of the sort that was observed in consumer subprime mortgage lending in the years leading up to 2007. The welfare effects of that conduct are easily established. Antitrust-based regulation can mitigate those welfare effects. Regulation that does exist, which operates at the level of the individual transaction, may be easily avoided, may be short-sighted, may suffer from enforcement problems that public choice theory explains, and/or may overreach by removing consumer choice. We show that antitrust enforcement …
Vertical Boilerplate, James Gibson
Vertical Boilerplate, James Gibson
James Gibson
Despite what we learn in law school about the “meeting of the minds,” most contracts are merely boilerplate -- take-it-or-leave-it propositions. Negotiation is nonexistent; we rely on our collective market power as consumers to regulate contracts’ content. But boilerplate imposes certain information costs, because it often arrives late in the transaction and is hard to understand. If those costs get too high, then the market mechanism fails. So how high are boilerplate’s information costs? A few studies have attempted to measure them, but they all use a “horizontal” approach -- i.e., they sample a single stratum of boilerplate and assume …
Barriers To Market Discipline: A Comparative Study Of Regulatory Reforms, Vincent Di Lorenzo
Barriers To Market Discipline: A Comparative Study Of Regulatory Reforms, Vincent Di Lorenzo
Vincent Di Lorenzo
Barriers to Market Discipline: A Comparative Study of Mortgage Market Reforms This article explores regulatory reforms in the U.S. and U.K. in response to the recent mortgage market crisis. These reform efforts serve as case studies for evaluation of necessary reforms being considered in many nations. Two issues are examined. First, the article explores the extent to which regulatory bodies have recognized behavioral barriers to market discipline on the part of both consumers and industry actors. The academic literature has long identified such barriers, but recognition by government regulators has lagged. Second the article examines the varied response in the …