This keynote presentation from the COST605 WG2 public workshop on "Mobile communications for the poor and needy", Lisbon, November 2008, gives definitions and an overview about how mobile communications and appropriate tariffs can help this disfavoured group. Statistical data are provided mostly...

Over the past decade, cost-benefit analysis in the field of financial regulation (“financial CBA”) has emerged as a topic of intense public interest. In reviewing rulemakings under the Administrative Procedure Act, courts have demanded greater rigor in the financial CBA that regulators...

Identifying whether hyperbolic advertising claims influence consumers is important for consumer protection, but differentiating mere "puffery" from misleading advertising is not straightforward. We conducted a pre-registered experiment to determine whether pseudo-technical advertising claims...

Policymakers and scholars have in distributional conversations traditionally ignored consumer laws, defined as the set of consumer protection, antitrust, and entry barrier laws that govern consumer transactions. Consumer law is overlooked partly because tax law is cast as the most efficient way...

Some COST 605 Action participating countries have contributed to a survey on the above subject. The focus is on: 1) social parameters , demographics / employment:/income of needy/poor people, and for measured or assumed mobile service usage and spending 2) cases of individual or groups of needy...

This article offers a proposal for the regulation of stem cell products by the Food and Drug Administration (“FDA”) that corresponds to a specialized product liability scheme. It shows how product liability and administrative law can be successfully integrated to create a comprehensive legal...

The ongoing financial crisis has exacerbated concerns about the need to redefine the role and characteristics of regulation. In the case of public services, deregulation was justified by the benefits that would accrue to consumers, though scant attention was paid to actual consumer experience in...

The Chinese version of this paper can be found at "http://ssrn.com/abstract=2008149" http://ssrn.com/abstract=2008149.As could be expected, the global financial crisis is on everybody's mind and causing a lot of worries. The current crisis has reached the consumers globally and intensified...

Price comparison is a basic element of competition. For comparison to work, at least prices need to be transparent. Moreover, price is usually a focal point in consumer thinking and deciding on transactions. Hence, obfuscating prices can be detrimental to consumers. Therefore, it is vital for...

Much has been written about the state of U.S. consumer credit market. In this Article, we provide an overview of the scholarship in this area and an interim diagnosis of the market failure. We identify the chief problem as various epistemic failures on the consumers' part, which lead to poor...