If producers have more information than consumers about goods' attributes, then they may use non-price (rather than price) adjustment mechanisms and, consequently, the market may reach a new equilibrium even if prices don't change. We study a situation where producers adjust the quantity per...

When the chairmen of the Federal Reserve Board and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Acting Comptroller of the Currency express doubts about a regulation designed to eliminate seventy percent of a market, and when the queen and spokeswoman of consumer financial protection, Elizabeth...

Whether through personal experiences or through the experiences of our friends and family, most, if not all, of us are all too familiar with the credit card industry's aggressive attempts to burden young college students with debt that they cannot afford to repay. Many students apply for and use...

In recent years, some Canadian politicians and powerful interest groups have issued increasingly vocal calls for dramatic regulatory interventions into the country's payment cards system. In particular, they have called for a "hard cap" price-controls on interchange fees, a ban on contractual...

Research shows that Black, Latinx, and other minorities pay more for credit and banking services, and that wealth accumulation differs starkly between their households and white households. The link between debt inequality and the wealth gap, however, remains less thoroughly explored,...

The EU adopted a new Directive on Consumer Rights (Directive 2011/83) (CRD), which came into effect on 13 June 2014. Its purpose is to align and harmonise national consumer rules applicable to domestic as well as cross-border consumer shopping within the EU Member States. The CRD applies to...

Prices that end with 9, also known as psychological price points, are common, comprising about 70% of the retail prices. They are also more rigid than other prices. We take advantage of a natural experiment to document an emergence of a new price ending that has the same effects as 9-endings. In...

This paper considers options for the UK Government's intended White Paper on online harms and safety. The report, which was funded by Sky, suggests that legislation should establish a framework for oversight and accountability of online platforms' handling of harmful and illegal content. Bunting...

The public debate about smart contracts, meant as self-help remedies grounded on distributed ledger technology, is filled with alarms and high expectations. They have been praised by the tech community as infallible software able to carry out the whole contractual cycle, from formation to...

Consumers and users are daily involved in commercial practices and transactions that can end up not pacifically. We buy items and services, we travel, we use public services and vehicles and we enter into contracts with banks, insurance and financial services companies. The disputes arising from...