Of the many current topics in Consumer Law and Economics, perhaps none have been more hotly debated than mandated disclosure. In “More Than You Wanted to Know: The Failure of Mandated Disclosure” (2014), Omri Ben-Shahar and Carl E. Schneider find that mandated disclosure deter lawmakers from adopting better regulations, impair people’s decisions, exacerbate inequality, and put crippling burdens on valuable enterprises. Furthermore, they argue, many consumers make the economically rational decision to not read mandated disclosures.
In addition to mandated disclosure, scholars have debated several other topics in Consumer Law and Economics in recent years. These topics include, for example, the protection of consumer internet data (particularly in light of GDPR), the regulation of boilerplate in consumer contracts, the rationality of consumers, the right to withdraw from consumer contracts, and the EU’s proposed “New Deal for Consumers”.
This conference aims to explore the neoclassical and behavioral economics approaches to consumer law and apply these approaches to current issues.