Misconduct – market actions that are unethical and indicative of fraud or wrongdoing – is a significant yet poorly understood issue that underlies many economic and financial transactions. Does misconduct in markets matter? When and how does reputation act as a discipline against seller...

Consumers claim to hate marketing - mostly, because they get too much unwanted marketing. In response, regulators develop medium-by-medium marketing suppression regulations. Unfortunately, these ad hoc solutions do little to satisfy consumers, and dynamic technologies and business practices...

Contract law treats consumer attention as if it were unlimited. We instead view consumer attention as a scarce resource that must be conserved. We argue that consumer contracts generate negative externalities by overwhelming consumers with information that depletes their attention and prevents...

Accompanying slide presentation available at http://ssrn.com/abstract=4019705Pigouvian taxes are often used to limit environmental externalities such as pollution. We argue that consumer contracts generate externalities by overwhelming consumers’ attention. Depleting each consumer’s...

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...

Customer return rate evolution—whether return rates decrease or increase over the course of the customer-firm relationship—is of great economic importance to retailers. Analyzing the complete purchase and return behavior of about 8,000 customers of an online fashion retailer over seven...