Consumer Protection Law Commons^™

An Economic Investigation Of Rent-To-Own Agreements, Michael H. Anderson

Chicago-Kent Law Review

Rent-to-own (RTO) allows immediate access to goods without a credit check and provides an opportunity for eventual acquisition. Yet goods can be returned at any point without penalty or other adverse financial consequence. RTO is attractive to financially distressed consumers due to its ready availability as well as the options embedded in the contract. These options include the ability to cancel, early purchase, reinstate following a consumer return, and, possibly, choose the frequency of payments. In this article, a body of research on RTO is brought together and summarized. The bulk of this work is empirical, applying statistical techniques to …

Maryland's Social Networking Law: No "Friend" To Employers And Employees, Alexander Borman

Journal of Business & Technology Law

No abstract provided.

Dodd-Frank 2.0: Creating Interactive Home-Loan Disclosures To Enable Shrewd Consumer Decision-Making, 27 Loy. Consumer L. Rev. 95 (2014), Debra Pogrund Stark, Jessica M. Choplin, Mark A. Leboeuf, Andrew Pizor

UIC Law Open Access Faculty Scholarship

In Section I, we summarize and analyze the Dodd-Frank laws that were enacted to regulate home loan terms and the key changes made to the home loan disclosure rules and forms, critiquing in particular the changes made to the APR component of the new CFPB disclosure form. In Section II, we detail and report on the methods and results from two APR Experiments we conducted (one using eyetracking technology to see which areas of the disclosure form participants were looking at and for how long); we also report on the low level of financial literacy of the participants reflected in …

Putting Stored-Value Cards In Their Place, Liran Haim, Ronald J. Mann

Faculty Scholarship

This Essay explores the effects of stored-value cards on social welfare. We argue that stored-value cards, in general, are socially beneficial payment devices. Their burgeoning use benefits society in three main plains. First, by replacing paper-based instruments in market segments previously inaccessible to card-based payments, stored-value cards lower the private and public costs of payment transactions. Second, by extending the use of card-based payment systems towards lower- and middle-income households, stored-value cards foster inclusion of those households in the financial mainstream of our society. Third, by operating without an extension of credit, stored-value cards help to limit the uniquely American …

Three Proposals For Regulating The Distribution Of Home Equity, Ian Ayres, Joshua Mitts

Faculty Scholarship

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s recently-released “qualified mortgage” rules effectively discourage predatory lending but miss an equally important source of systemic risk: low-equity clustering. Specific “volatility-inducing” mortgage terms, when present in a substantial cluster of mortgage contracts, exacerbate macroeconomic risk by increasing the chance that the housing and lending markets will have to absorb a wave of simultaneous defaults after a downturn in housing prices. This Article shows that these terms became prevalent in a substantial proportion of residential mortgages in the years leading up to the home mortgage crisis. In contrast, during the earlier “amortization era” (when mortgagors were …

The Lawlessness Of Standing, John Paredes

Loyola Consumer Law Review

Abstract: In Clapper v. Amnesty International, the Supreme Court ruled that lawyers and journalists do not have standing to challenge government warrantless wiretapping of international correspondence under the 2008 amendments to FISA. The Court refused to recognize the increased costs of protecting confidential communications as injuries-in-fact unless surveillance is “certainly impending.” But more tellingly, the plaintiffs did not even allege the real injury at stake—the loss of a reasonable expectation of privacy for groups the government targets. The standing doctrine forces parties and courts to reason insincerely and blocks potentially meritorious lawsuits. Although there have been proposals to reform …

The Volcker Rule: A Regulatory Vice Under The Guise Of Consumer Protection, Shay Raoofi

Loyola Consumer Law Review

No abstract provided.

Ftc Trims Fat From Advertisements In The New Year, Joseph Axelrod

Loyola Consumer Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Telephone Consumer Protection Act Of 1991: Adapting Consumer Protection To Changing Technology, Spencer Weber Waller, Daniel B. Heidtke, Jessica Stewart

Loyola Consumer Law Review

No abstract provided.

Unveiling Fairness For The Consumer: The Law, Economics And Justice Of Expanded Arbitration, Bruce Wardhaugh

Loyola Consumer Law Review

No abstract provided.

Craft Beer Drinkers Reignite The Wine Wars, Shirley Chen

Loyola Consumer Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Future Of Class Actions In The Wake Of Comcast V. Behrend , Megan Toal

Loyola Consumer Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Practical Impacts Of Requirements Imposed On Condominium Developers After The Mortgage Crisis: A Case Sutdy Of Double Aa International Investment Group, Inc. V. Swire Pacific Holdings And How Escrow Requirements Shaped Future Financing Of New Condominium Construction, Joshua A. Berman, Jordan P. Sarason

Loyola Consumer Law Review

No abstract provided.

Crimes And Medical Care On Board Cruise Ships: Do The Statistics Fit The Crimes?, Leticia M. Diaz, Barry Hart Dubner, Nicole Mckee

Loyola Consumer Law Review

In 2009, your authors published an article entitled An Examination of the Evolution of Crimes at Sea and the Emergence of the Many Legal Regimes in Their Wake.1 The article discussed various international problems that can occur on cruise ships at sea.2 The cruise ship industry was, and still is, largely self-regulated—which in turn leads to serious problems arising from the neglect of passenger concerns.3 At that time, we disclosed that there were many international regulations addressing some areas, but not all.4 The present day poses different problems than in the past. The intention of this article is to …

Private Parties And The Ffdca: How Creative Litigants Have Circumvented Section 310 And Undermined The Nlea’S Express Preemption Amendments, Joe Dages

Catholic University Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Empty Call For Benefit-Cost Analysis In Financial Regulation, Jeffrey N. Gordon

Faculty Scholarship

The call for benefit-cost analysis (BCA) in financial regulation misunderstands the origins and utility of BCA as a guide to administrative rule making. Benefit-cost analysis imagines an omniscient social planner who can calculate costs and benefits from a natural system that generates prices (costs and benefits) that do not change (or change much) no matter what the central planner does. For example, the toxicity of chemicals, the health hazards of emissions, the statistical value of life – these do not change in response to health-and-safety regulation. For the financial sector, however, the system that generates costs and benefits is constructed …

Selective Contracting In Prescription Drugs: The Benefits Of Pharmacy Networks, Joanna Shepherd

Faculty Articles

Selective contracting in health care involves contractual arrangements among insurers and health care providers that give covered individuals a financial incentive to obtain health care from a limited panel of providers. Although selective contracting has been an important strategy of health insurance plans for decades, it has only recently expanded to prescription drug coverage. Drug plans now create pharmacy networks that channel customers to in-network pharmacies. Pharmacies compete to be part of the networks by offering discounts on the drugs they sell to covered customers and drug plans. Although networks can lower prescription drug costs for drug plans and consumers, …

The Tempting Of Antitrust: Robert Bork And The Goals Of Antitrust Policy, Daniel A. Crane

Articles

Of all Robert Bork’s many important contributions to antitrust law, none was more significant than his identification of economic efficiency, disguised as consumer welfare, as the sole normative objective of U.S. antitrust law. The Supreme Court relied primarily on Bork’s argument that Congress intended the Sherman Act to advance consumer welfare in making its landmark statement in Reiter v. Sonotone that “Congress designed the Sherman Act as a ‘consumer welfare prescription.’” This singular normative vision proved foundational to the reorientation of antitrust law away from an interventionist, populist, Brandeisian, and vaguely Jeffersonian conception of antitrust law as a constraint on …

Tesla And The Car Dealers’ Lobby, Daniel A. Crane

Law & Economics Working Papers

Tesla Motors, the offspring of the South African-American entrepreneur Elon Musk who also brought us Pay-Pal and SpaceX, is the most exciting automotive development in many decades and a marquee story of American technological dynamism and innovation. The company’s luxury electric cars have caused a sensation in the auto industry, including a review by Consumer Reports calling Tesla’s Model S the best car it ever tested.

Tesla faces enormous challenges in penetrating an automotive market that has been dominated for a century by internal combustion engines. Not only must it build cars that customers want to drive (and, ultimately, produce …

The Telephone Consumer Protection Act Of 1991: Adapting Consumer Protection To Changing Technology, Spencer Weber Waller

Faculty Publications & Other Works

No abstract provided.