This paper grew out of the central issue addressed in Trading Up: Consumer and Environmental Regulation in a Global Economy by David Vogel, namely the impact of economic globalization on consumers’ protection regulations. Reviewing the extensive matter of consumer protection, with a thorough...

Experimental subjects allocate $10,000 across four S&P 500 index funds. Subject rewards depend on the chosen portfolio's subsequent return. Because the investments are not actually intermediated by the fund companies, portfolio returns are unbundled from non-portfolio services. The optimal...

We analyze a model in which firms are able to acquire information about product risks and may or may not be required to disclose this information. We initially study the effect of disclosure rules assuming that firms are not liable for the harm caused by their products. Although mandatory...

We use an experiment to estimate the effect of the SEC's Summary Prospectus, which simplifies mutual fund disclosure. Our subjects chose an equity portfolio and a bond portfolio. Subjects received either statutory prospectuses or Summary Prospectuses. We find no evidence that the Summary...

We discuss the impact of consumer protection policies on consumer incentives to become informed of the best deals available in the market. In a market with costly consumer search, we find that imposing a cap on suppliers' prices reduces the incentive to engage in search, with the result that...

Several theoretical and methodological perspectives have been used to understand the trans-formations occurred during the last 20 years in the Costa Rican State. This work aims to de-fine a coherent approach of such transformations in order to understand them and be able to offer possible...

In the context of emission trading it seems to be taken as given that people's preferences can be ignored with respect to the whole process of fixing emission targets and allocating emission permits to polluters. With this paper we want to reopen the debate on how citizens can be involved in...

We survey some of the literature on the effects of improved market transparency on competition in ologopoly. Generally, improved transparency from the perspective of irms makes detection of deviations from tacitly collusive agreements easier, thus facilitating oligopolistic coordination. On the...

Nudge is a semantically multifarious concept that originates in Thaler and Sunstein's (2008) popular eponymous book. In one of its senses, it is a policy for redirecting an agent's choices by only slightly altering his choice conditions, in another sense, it is concerned with bounded rationality...

This paper presents the findings from an OECD International Network on Financial Education pilot study undertaken in 14 countries. The analysis focuses on variations in financial knowledge, behaviour and attitude across countries and within countries by socio-demographics.<p>The results highlight a...</p>