The Archives

Everything written by Omri Ben-Shahar on law, economics, and more

Omri Ben-Shahar

Omri Ben-Shahar is the Leo and Eileen Herzel Professor of Law, and Kearney Director and founder of the Coase-Sandor Institute for Law and Economics at the University of Chicago Law School.

Before joining the University of Chicago in 2008, Ben-Shahar was the Kirkland and Ellis Professor of Law and Economics at the University of Michigan, and was the founder and director of the Olin Center for Law and Economics from 1999 to 2008. He taught at Tel-Aviv University, was a member of Israel's Antitrust Court and clerked at the Supreme Court of Israel.

Ben-Shahar earned his PhD in economics and SJD from Harvard in 1995 and his bachelor's and LLB from the Hebrew University in 1990.

Posts

The faulty logic of "protecting" consumers from the absence of annual fees

Omri Ben-Shahar Jan 07, 2010

Our friend and University of Chicago law professor, Omri Ben-Shahar, fresh off a run participating in our credit card interchange fee symposium, has penned a guest post following up on our ongoing discussion of annual fees: There is no annual fee for shopping at Wal-Mart, but there is an annual fee for shopping at Sam’s ... The faulty logic of "protecting" consumers from the absence of annual fees

Consumer ProtectionFinancial RegulationPayments & Payment Networks

The Fee Neutrality Claim

Omri Ben-Shahar Dec 09, 2009

Will reduction in interchange fees help or hurt consumers? Two posts yesterday made the conjecture that a reduction in one category of fees would only increase other fees, and that the overall sum of fees will not change. This is the fee-neutrality claim. Todd Zywicki writes: The mathematics of the situation is inescapable: card issuers ... The Fee Neutrality Claim

Consumer ProtectionEconomicsFinancial Regulation

The Myth of Consumer Protection Through Disclosure

Omri Ben-Shahar Dec 08, 2009

I will focus my blog post on one of the proposals for reducing interchange fees: the requirement that the fees be disclosed to consumers. I am not sure how seriously this option is taken by the GAO report. Indeed, the report concedes that mandated disclosures in this context are not very likely to be effective, ... The Myth of Consumer Protection Through Disclosure

Consumer ProtectionFinancial RegulationInsurance