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...

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...

Despite what we learn in law school about the “meeting of the minds,” most contracts are merely boilerplate -- take-it-or-leave-it propositions. Negotiation is nonexistent; we rely on our collective market power as consumers to regulate contracts’ content. But boilerplate imposes certain...

We report the results of an experiment to systematically investigate the influence of different settings in credence good markets on opportunism in the sellers' decisions. We find that, as predicted by a cognitive dissonance model, the specific choice of the design features might be less...

When experts have superior information on their customers' needs and appropriate treatment/repair/advice is a credence good, there are obvious incentives for opportunistic behavior. What compounds this is that experts regularly make treatment recommendations and price offers only after consumers...

We examine the influence of guilt and trust on the performance of credence goods markets. An expert can make a promise to a consumer first, whereupon the consumer can express her trust by paying an interaction price before the expert's provision and charging decisions. We argue that the expert's...

We examine the influence of guilt and trust on the performance of credence goods markets. An expert can make a promise to a consumer first, whereupon the consumer can express her trust by paying an interaction price before the expert's provision and charging decisions. We argue that the expert's...