One of the centerpieces of the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation was the creation of a new federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau of the Federal Reserve. Few bureaucratic agencies in American history, if any, have combined the simultaneous degree of vast, vaguely-defined power and...

The aftermath of the financial crisis has seen the formation of several new banking regulators and an onslaught of new financial regulation. In the area of consumer financial protection bureau these regulations have resuscitated the regulatory approach of prior eras, namely substantive...

The creation of a new Consumer Financial Protection Agency (“CFPA”) is a very bad idea and should be rejected. The proposal is not salvageable and cannot be improved in substance or in form. The foundational premise of the CFPA is that a failure of consumer protection, and specifically...

This testimony addresses the proposal of the Obama Administration to create a new Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA) which would have the authority to issue and enforce new regulations related to consumer lending products. This testimony criticizes the proposal on three grounds. First,...

“Behavioral Law and Economics” (BLE) is a specialized component of the legal literature that purports to base its conclusions on a branch of economic analysis known as behavioral economics. The central claim of BLE is that by applying findings of behavioral economics to the real world it can...

This paper examines the relationship between behavioral law and economics (BLE) as a policy prescription platform and its influence on the regulations emerging from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). We show how these regulations are inconsistent with the intent and purpose of...

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's Arbitration Study: Report to Congress 2015 does not support the case for ex ante regulation of mandatory consumer arbitration clauses. It contains no data on the typical arbitration outcome - a settlement - and it is these arbitral settlements, and not...

We analyze 15.6 million storefront payday loans made to 1.8 million unique borrowers in 2013 to examine payday loan terms and usage. We find that loan prices and loan amounts are generally not at state-mandated maximum levels. For the 30 states in our sample, we find that the number of loans per...

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is considering new regulation of payday lending and bank overdraft protection. The Dodd-Frank Act, which established the CFPB, recognizes that consumers benefit from competition among providers of consumer credit products. That law requires the...