Forced arbitration clauses have become almost unavoidable in contracts for financial services and products ranging form credit cards to private student loans. This report examines how the financial services industry uses these clauses to defeat consumers' rights and evade accountability for...

Recent advances in advertising technology have lead to the development of “native advertising”, which is a format of advertising that mimics the other non-sponsored content on the medium. While advertisers have rapidly embraced the format on a variety of digital media, regulators have...

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 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...

Beim vierten Verbraucherforschungsforum an der Zeppelin Universität in Friedrichshafen entwickelten Wissenschaftler aus verschiedenen Disziplinen gemeinsam eine Agenda für die Verbraucherforschung in der digitalen Welt. Im Zeitgespräch dokumentieren wir die Impulsreferate zu wesentlichen...

Moderne Marktordnungen schützen den Verbraucher vor Schäden und sichern den Leistungswettbewerb und die Funktionsfähigkeit von Märkten. Wettbewerbsorientierte Verbraucherpolitik und verbraucherorientierte Wettbewerbspolitik ergänzen sich dabei. Die Verhaltensökonomik zeigt allerdings, dass...

For many goods and services, such as cellular-phone service and debit-card transactions, the price of the next unit of service depends on past usage. As a result, consumers who are inattentive to their past usage but are aware of contract terms may remain uncertain about the price of the next...

If a firm misleads consumers about the value of its product, does it matter if some consumers are more influenced by the deception than others? We show with a simple model that the answer is a resounding yes. Harm increases unambiguously due to an increase in the heterogeneity of deception, and...

The traditional information paradigm postulates that increasing the amount of information and establishing full transparency helps consumers with their decisions. We challenge this assumption and address criteria that good consumer information needs to fulfil. Based on the findings from research...

The design of default provisions in consumer contracts involves an aspect that does not normally arise in other contexts. Unlike commercial parties, consumers have only limited information about the content of the default rule and how it fits with their preference. Inefficient default rules may...