Behavioral economics is influencing regulatory initiatives in many nations, including the United States and the United Kingdom. The role of behavioral economics is likely to increase in the next generation, especially in light of the growing interest in low-cost, choice-preserving regulatory...

In diverse areas – from retirement savings, to fuel economy, to prescription drugs, to consumer credit, to food and beverage consumption – government makes personal decisions for us or helps us make what it sees as better decisions. In other words, government serves as our agent. Understood...

This essay considers the role of reputational information in our marketplace. It explains how well-functioning marketplaces depend on the vibrant flow of accurate reputational information, and how misdirected regulation of reputational information could harm marketplace mechanisms. It then...

The Internet has become an integral part of the everyday life of households, firms and governments. Its proper functioning over the long run is therefore crucial for economic growth and people’s wellbeing more generally. The success of the Internet depends on its openness and the confidence of...

We analyze in a two-phase model the optimal mix of ex ante experimentation and ex post learning for the dynamic adoption of activities with uncertain payoffs. In a first pre-introduction phase, costly experimentation is undertaken to decide whether to adopt the activity or abandon...

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...

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...

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...

Fresh off of the most substantial national liquidity crisis of the last generation and the enactment of sweeping credit card regulation in the form of the Credit CARD Act, Congress continues to deliberate, with a continuing drumbeat of support from lobbyists, a set of new regulations for credit...

The proliferation of product returns entails substantial financial and environmental costs. Nonetheless, regulators typically restrict firms from charging high fees from consumers who return products, thereby facilitating product returns. To analyze the consequences of such interventions, we...