I investigate alternative explanations for the content of privacy policies. Under one model of self-regulation, firms signal their privacy protections to consumers by highlighting compliance with third-party guidelines. However, in a sample of 249 privacy policies, only 27% claim compliance with...

The aim of the American Law Institute's new “Principles of the Law of Software Contracts” is to improve online contracting practices. Instead of regulating terms directly to reduce the possibility of unfair or biased terms, the Principles emphasize increased contract disclosure to encourage...

Disclosure has long been the preferred regulatory approach to prevent one-sided standard-form contract terms, but its efficacy is unclear. For disclosure to be effective, it must increase readership of contracts and, conditional on reading, affect decisions. I use clickstream data on software...

A cornerstone of the law and economics approach to standard-form contracts is the informed-minority hypothesis: in competitive markets, a minority of term-conscious buyers is sufficient to discipline sellers from using unfavorable boilerplate terms. This argument is often invoked to limit...