Showing results for: “digital markets act”
Stossel Returns
An announcement from John Stossel: It’s finally here – my new Fox Business show! Fox fittingly has titled it, Stossel. It premieres Thursday at 8 p.m. It will repeat Fridays at 10 p.m., where I’ll be up against my old program, 20/20. FBN has given me an opportunity to do 44 TV shows on what ... Stossel Returns
Searle Center Preliminary Report on State Consumer Protection Acts
The Searle Center Civil Justice Institute has announced the release of its preliminary report on State Consumer Protection Acts: An Empirical Investigation of Private Litigation. You can read the Executive Summary here. As the Searle Center State Consumer Protection Acts Task Force Chair, I’ve been involved in the data collection, analysis, and drafting of this ... Searle Center Preliminary Report on State Consumer Protection Acts
Robert Rhee on Nationalization in a Time of Crisis
I have spent the better part of the year studying the consequences of government ownership in the private sector, see Treasury Inc.: How the Bailout Reshapes Corporate Theory and Practice. I recently had the opportunity to read a new paper from Robert Rhee that examines the issue from a different point of view, Nationalization of ... Robert Rhee on Nationalization in a Time of Crisis
Informational Cascades, Reputational Cascades, Group Polarization, and the Climate Emails
It’s been interesting to observe the responses to the hacked emails from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia. The emails seem to show leading global warming scientists massaging data to generate the result they prefer (i.e., “I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series ... Informational Cascades, Reputational Cascades, Group Polarization, and the Climate Emails
Symposium Wrap Up
Thanks to all of our participants and readers for the blog symposium–both the posts and the comments were engaging and thoughtful, and I hope these entries will be helpful in the ongoing debate over credit cards and interchange fees. A concluding point or two: Credit card networks are incredibly complex, and no one fully understands ... Symposium Wrap Up
The Institutional Dynamic: Understand First, Act Second—If At All
I have now had a chance to review the excellent posts on the second day, all of which have a common flavor. They expand the universe of relative considerations that need to be taken into account to decide whether imposing caps on interchange fees enhances or reduces overall social welfare. The narrow perspective on this ... The Institutional Dynamic: Understand First, Act Second—If At All
Merchant Collusion as an Antitrust Remedy
In my first post I discussed the potential for interchange legislation from a consumer protection perspective, that is, would the combination of disclosure requirements coupled with a reduction of interchange fees be likely to improve consumer welfare. I concluded that from the consumer protection perspective, the case for interchange legislation was weak. I noted that ... Merchant Collusion as an Antitrust Remedy
The Fee Neutrality Claim
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
Allocating the Costs of Fraud
Geoffrey A. Manne is Executive Director of the International Center for Law & Economics and a Lecturer in Law at Lewis & Clark Law School. I take to heart Jim’s claim that fraud is too-little discussed in this realm given its cost, and thus I’ll try my hand at it. Every discussion of the industrial ... Allocating the Costs of Fraud
Assessing the Social Effects of the Use of Credit Cards
The GAO has a fairly extensive discussion of the costs and benefits of credit cards to merchants. However, that discussion focuses on the individual benefits. I would like to step back and put two of those benefits – increased merchant sales and fraud prevention costs – into the larger context that I discussed earlier. First, ... Assessing the Social Effects of the Use of Credit Cards
Interchange fees and other rules
The GAO report raises concerns about card association the level of interchange fees (that acquirers pay issuers for credit card transactions processed) but also about other card association rules such as the ‘no surcharge rule.’ That rule prevents a merchant who accepts card transactions from charging a ‘point of sale’ premium to consumers who use ... Interchange fees and other rules
Surcharging and Honor-All-Cards
Generally, merchants charge the same price regardless of the type of payment instrument used to make purchases. In many jurisdictions, merchants are not allowed to add a surcharge for payment card transactions because of legal (some states in the U.S. do not allow surcharges) or contractual (card networks generally do not allow surcharges) restrictions. But, ... Surcharging and Honor-All-Cards
