We seem to be in the middle of a paradigm shift in consumer protection. For decades, regulators understood their mission as “preserving choice” through more effective informational remedies. In the past decade -- and more decisively during the Biden Administration -- a growing appreciation for the limits of consumer choice and market competition has led bureaucrats and scholars to shift toward interpreting consumers interests and thinking pragmatically about how to shape regulation to further those interests. The Article describes the change in historical context and provides a theoretical grounding for it, articulating a pluralist theory of consumer protection under the label “moral economy.” The central legal focus of the Article is the statutory authority that has grounded much of the recent regulatory activity: the prohibition on “unfair acts or practices” shared by many federal and state agencies with consumer protection jurisdiction. The descriptive and normative arguments of this Article explain why it is now at the center of the action -- and why that should be welcomed.

Introduction -- Abiding issues -- Argumentation of the courts and contemporary legal scholarship -- Making behavioralism work -- Fashioning consumer cognitive capability -- Open approaches to promoting innovation and economic growth -- From market access to cumulative innovation -- Conclusion

"This work explores the subtle and multifaceted nuances that lead consumers to behave in one way or another. On the whole, the cognitive psychological research has demonstrated that consumer decision-making is a profound topic that is considerably more complex than previously supposed. It is the objective to enable the reader to understand the complexity of individual decision-making, so that legal policy can create environments in which consumers are both better informed, and find more meaning and satisfaction in what they buy."--Résumé de l'éditeur.

In today's highly concentrated marketplaces, social and cultural values--such as the lifestyle connotations that manufacturers and sellers confer upon their goods--often shape consumers' prior beliefs and attitudes and affect the weight given to new information by consumers who make purchasing decisions in the marketplace. Such consumer goods present the largely unexplored problem of contemporary market regulatory theory according to which an increased amount of product differentiation has rendered everyday purchasing decisions such as the choice between an iPhone or a Samsung Galaxy Note as much a matter of personal identity rather than merely one of tangible product attributes. The basic challenge for market regulators and courts in such an environment is to make markets work effectively by providing a more efficient exchange of information about consumer preferences relating to tangible product features, functions, and quality. This book demonstrates that improved legal policy can assist consumers and increase market efficiency. It acknowledges that once particular beliefs held by consumers have become culturally or socially entrenched, they are very difficult to change. What is more, changing such beliefs is no longer simply a matter of educating people through the provision of additional information. Developing a novel framework through a detailed analysis of case law relating to consumer goods markets, this book delivers an accessible introduction to the law and economics of consumer decision-making, and a forceful critique of contemporary market regulatory policy.

This book, published in 1986, addresses questions concerned with a central normative principle in contemporary assessments of economic policies and systems. What does 'consumer sovereignty' mean? Is consumer sovereignty an appropriate principle for the optimization and evaluation of the design and performance of economic policies, institutions and systems? If not, what is a more appropriate principle? The author argues that the conception of consumer sovereignty has to be broadened so that it is not limited to the market mechanism but includes environmental, work and social preferences. However, even this version runs into serious difficulties as the principle of consumer sovereignty still relies on too subjectivist a conception of the interests of individuals to be suitable for the evaluation of economic institutions. An alternative basis for such evaluation is 'human interests' that are not contingent on particular economic systems, After considering various possibilities, a basic-needs approach is proposed and its use in economic evaluation illustrated.

This article is about the relationship between antitrust and consumer protection law. Its purpose is to define each area of law, to delineate the boundary between them, to show how they interact with each other, and to show how they ultimately support one another as the two component parts of an overarching unity: effective consumer choice (also called consumer sovereignty). Consumer choice only is effective when two fundamental conditions are present. There must be a range of consumer options made possible through competition, and consumers must be able to choose effectively among these options. The antitrust laws are intended to ensure that the marketplace remains competitive, unimpaired by practices such as price fixing or anticompetitive mergers. The consumer protection laws are then intended to ensure that consumers can choose effectively from among those options, with their critical faculties unimpaired by such violations as deception or the withholding of material information. Protection at both levels is needed to ensure that a market economy can continue to operate effectively. Legal protection of this sort is required only when the free market is not working properly. This article will demonstrate that antitrust violations stem from market failures in the general marketplace external to consumers, whereas consumer protection violations flow from market failures that take place, in a sense, "inside the consumer's heads." This approach provides a coherent theoretical platform from which antitrust and consumer protection law may be better understood and applied. It also has significant practical consequences, many of which are explored in this article. This article is a companion piece to "Using the Consumer Choice to Antitrust Law," 74 Antitrust Law Journal 175 (2007), which can be found at http://ssrn.com/abstract=1121459.

This book presents a new intellectual history of neoliberalism through the exploration of the sovereign consumer. Invented by neoliberal thinkers in the interwar period, this figure has been crucial to the construction and legimitization of neoliberal ideology and politics. Analysis of the sovereign consumer across time and space demonstrates how neoliberals have linked the figure both to the idea of democracy as a method of choice, and also to a re-invention of the market as the democratic forum par excellence. Moreover, Olsen contemplates how the sovereign consumer has served to marketize politics and functioned as a major driver in a wide-ranging transformation in political thinking, subjecting traditional political values to the narrow pursuit of economic growth. A politically timely project, The Sovereign Consumer will have a wide appeal in academic circles, especially for those interested in consumer and welfare studies, and in political, economic and cultural thought in the twentieth century.

The Consumer Welfare Hypothesis in Law and Economics is a compelling account of market relations with firm roots in economic theory and legal practice. This incisive book challenges the mainstream view that allocative efficiency is about total welfare maximisation. Instead, it argues for the consumer welfare hypothesis, in which allocating resources efficiently means maximising consumer welfare, and demonstrates that legal structures such as antitrust and consumer law are in reality designed and practised with this goal in mind.