Person: Bar-Gill, Oren
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Bar-Gill
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Oren
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Bar-Gill, Oren
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Publication Making Credit Safer(University of Pennsylvania, 2008) Bar-Gill, Oren; Warren, ElizabethPublication Law and the Boundaries of Technology-Intensive Firms(University of Pennsylvania, 2009) Bar-Gill, Oren; Parchomovsky, GideonPublication Exit from Contract(Oxford University Press (OUP), 2014) Bar-Gill, Oren; Ben-Shahar, OmriExit from contract is one of the most powerful consumer protection devices, freeing consumers from bad deals and keeping businesses honest. Yet consumers often choose transactions with lock-in provisions, trading off exit rights for other perks. This article examines the costs and benefits of free exit, as compared to the lock-in alternative. It argues that present regulation of exit penalties is poorly tailored to address concerns about lock-in, particularly in light of increasingly ubiquitous market-based solutions. The article also calls (regulatory) attention to loyalty rewards, which are shown to be as powerful as exit penalties, and equally detrimental.Publication Regulation as Delegation(2015) Bar-Gill, Oren; Sunstein, CassIn diverse areas – from retirement savings, to fuel economy, to prescription drugs, to consumer credit, to food and beverage consumption – government makes personal decisions for us or helps us make what it sees as better decisions. In other words, government serves as our agent. Understood in light of Principal-Agent Theory (PAT) and Behavioral Principal-Agent Theory (BPAT), a great deal of modern regulation can be helpfully evaluated as a hypothetical delegation. Regulation as Delegation offers a new perspective on familiar objections to apparently paternalistic acts on government’s part, and suggests important distinctions among different kinds of hypothetical delegations. Different regulatory techniques map onto greater or lesser degrees of delegation. Government mandates (and bans) represent complete delegation. No regulation, leaving individuals to decide by themselves, corresponds to no delegation. In between, partial delegation techniques include default rules, which can be viewed as presumptive decisions by the agent subject to the principal’s veto power, and disclosure mandates, which assign an information acquisition role to the agent. BPAT recognizes distinctive roles for the government-agent. A sophisticated principal who is aware of her behavioral biases has more reason to delegate to a rational agent. But bounded rationality might also increase the risks of delegation, since an agent with misaligned interests can take advantage of the imperfectly rational principal. Shifting from personal decisions to public goods problems, we introduce the idea of reverse delegation, with the government as principal and the individuals as agents. Here the government as principal, as representative of the People, sets a public objective – a clean, sustainable environment, financial stability, higher educational attainment – and enlists individuals as agents to help attain this objective.Publication Guilty Pleasures(University of Chicago Law School and Gifford Combs, 2015) Bar-Gill, OrenPublication Price Caps in Multi-Price Markets(2015) Bar-Gill, OrenMany consumer markets feature a multi-dimensional price. A policymaker – a legislator, a regulator or a court – concerned about the level of one price dimension may decide to cap this price. How will such a price cap affect other price dimensions? Will the overall effect be good or bad for consumers? For social welfare? Price caps can be beneficial when sellers set prices in response to consumer misperception. The scope for welfare-enhancing regulation depends on the type (and direction) of the underlying misperception, as well as on market structure.Publication The Law, Economics and Psychology of Subprime Mortgage Contracts(Cornell Law Review, 2009) Bar-Gill, Oren