Paul Pautler, Apr 24, 2008
The Spring 2008 issue of Competition Policy International features four papers focusing on consumer protection policy. The papers by Armstrong, Beales, Rubin, and Tesauro & Russo present a tour of the logical basis for consumer protection policy and a review of the recent legal rules in the European Union and Italy. There is no book (yet) on consumer protection economics, but this collection of papers would make a nice start for such a text, particularly with regard to the advertising regulation component of consumer protection. There are some topics that cut across the various papers. I will discuss three of those topics:
- 1) market-based incentives for firms to disclose information in markets;
- 2) the application of behavioral economics in consumer policy; and
- 3) the connections between consumer protection and competition policies at a practical level and at the more important conceptual level.
Before discussing these common elements, I provide a description of the papers.
