Catastrophes including the COVID19 pandemic of 2019-2020 impose great financial stress on consumers. This op-ed proposes the distribution of economic relief directly to consumers by authorizing credit card issuers to bill Congress for portions of the interest that otherwise would be charged to...

This article briefly reviews the roots of domestic arbitration policy and the corresponding development of consumer protection policy. It asserts that international arbitration policy was always intended to be tempered by consumer protection principles. Next, the article summarizes the Canadian...

Since the 1990s, the development of Consumer Alternative Dispute Resolution (CADR) schemes allowing consumers and traders to solve their disputes out-of-court has been an ever-growing phenomenon with increasing political importance at the European level. The EU regulatory framework for CADR...

In this paper a network model is developed in which three players sequentially choose their strategies. In the first stage, a profit–maximizing network firm chooses the price and thus the size of the network. In the second stage the consumers decide whether to join in the network or not. In...

In this article the author outlines some difficulties facing the cyber-shopper. These include the practical difficulties of enforcement and redress which arise when a cyber-shopper purchases a defective product from an overseas supplier, or when misleading information is placed on the internet...

This article examines the benefits of the class action for New Zealand consumers. It analyses the current operation of the New Zealand class action and recommends significant reform to expand the use of the class action and to give clear specific guidelines on its operation. The author defines a...

In this paper a novel form of online users, the “Online Crowds,” is described. “Online Crowds” gather virtually, behave and act collectively and produce effects and phenomena which would not be possible without the Internet [Hof 05]. A remarkable example is “The Million Dollar...

This paper maps out some of the vertical restraints in the online environment that are particularly relevant from the consumer perspective. This article focuses on some of the most contentious vertical restraints that directly involve prices, are particularly relevant for online commerce and are...

Confidence seems to replace certain knowledge and the necessity for specific information. It simplifies economical processes and procedures, it motivates investing, and obviously, it enhances welfare — if it was missing, innumerable dealings would not be made. Consequently, if confidence among...

We examine the effect of direct mail (commonly referred to as junk mail) advertising on individual financial decisions by studying consumer choice of home equity debt contracts. Consistent with the theoretical predictions, we find that financial variables underlying the relative pricing of debt...