Contract Design in the Shadow of Regulation

Does the threat of legal reform encourage companies to adopt high-quality contract terms that consumers ignore so that companies can use them in lobbying efforts to avoid reform? That may be an overlooked answer to a puzzle about consumer contracts. Consumers ignore most contract terms at the time of acceptance, so scholars usually expect companies to pick ignored terms of the lowest possible quality that courts will let them get away with. But some companies pick terms that are surprisingly high-quality. Courts do not require these terms that consumers ignore, so firms that pick them incur costs for seemingly little gain. This Article identifies a novel function of these terms: their audience is not courts or consumers but policymakers deciding whether to reform status quo legal rules from which companies profit. Drawing on behavioral law and economics, and illustrating with a case study of lobbying surrounding the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s bank account overdraft rule, this Article shows how companies use the high-quality terms they adopt in anticipation of regulation to “frame” the status quo rule. High-quality terms help show how the status quo rule might benefit consumers, letting companies appeal to policymakers’ cognitive biases so they are more likely to support the status quo rule. This Article addresses several practical and theoretical implications of anticipatory self-regulation to frame reform. On one hand, even the threat of legal reform might influence the kinds of contract terms businesses adopt. On the other, a small minority of contract terms can take on outsized role in policy debates about legal reform, potentially distorting policymaking. As a theoretical matter, moreover, the Article complements information revelation models of sequential policymaking by showing how actors at one stage can frame information so policymakers at a later stage resort to decision-simplifying heuristics that favor the status quo. I. Introduction II. Unexpectedly High-Quality Nonsalient Terms ... A. The Expected Race to the Bottom ... B. Puzzling Examples of High-Quality Nonsalient Terms ... 1. Overdraft Protection ... 2. Website Privacy Policies ... 3. Pro-Consumer Clauses in Relational Contracts of Adhesion ... 4. Do We See Anticipatory Self-Regulation Elsewhere? III. Anticipatory Self-Regulation and Framing Effects ... A. Framing the Status Quo in Policy Discourse with Contract Terms ... 1. Framing Effects ... 2. Contract Terms’ Salience to Policymakers ... B. Case Study: Using Anticipatory Self-Regulation to Frame Policy Choice ... 1. Status Quo Bias ... 2. Loss Aversion ... 3. Availability ... C. A General Account of Anticipatory Self-Regulation to Frame Policy ... D. Objections and Alternative Explanations ... 1. Assessing Objections … 2. Alternative Explanations to Anticipatory Self-Regulation IV. Implications ... A. Theoretical, Empirical, and Normative Implications ... B. Practical Implications for Policymakers and Reformers V. Conclusio

A LOFAR observation of ionospheric scintillation from two simultaneous travelling ionospheric disturbances

This paper presents the results from one of the first observations of ionospheric scintillation taken using the Low-Frequency Array (LOFAR). The observation was of the strong natural radio source Cassiopeia A, taken overnight on 18–19 August 2013, and exhibited moderately strong scattering effects in dynamic spectra of intensity received across an observing bandwidth of 10–80 MHz. Delay-Doppler spectra (the 2-D FFT of the dynamic spectrum) from the first hour of observation showed two discrete parabolic arcs, one with a steep curvature and the other shallow, which can be used to provide estimates of the distance to, and velocity of, the scattering plasma. A cross-correlation analysis of data received by the dense array of stations in the LOFAR “core” reveals two different velocities in the scintillation pattern: a primary velocity of ~20–40 ms−1 with a north-west to south-east direction, associated with the steep parabolic arc and a scattering altitude in the F-region or higher, and a secondary velocity of ~110 ms−1 with a north-east to south-west direction, associated with the shallow arc and a scattering altitude in the D-region. Geomagnetic activity was low in the mid-latitudes at the time, but a weak sub-storm at high latitudes reached its peak at the start of the observation. An analysis of Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) and ionosonde data from the time reveals a larger-scale travelling ionospheric disturbance (TID), possibly the result of the high-latitude activity, travelling in the north-west to south-east direction, and, simultaneously, a smaller-scale TID travelling in a north-east to south-west direction, which could be associated with atmospheric gravity wave activity. The LOFAR observation shows scattering from both TIDs, at different altitudes and propagating in different directions. To the best of our knowledge this is the first time that such a phenomenon has been reported

Secretion of Genome-Free Hepatitis B Virus – Single Strand Blocking Model for Virion Morphogenesis of Para-retrovirus

As a para-retrovirus, hepatitis B virus (HBV) is an enveloped virus with a double-stranded (DS) DNA genome that is replicated by reverse transcription of an RNA intermediate, the pregenomic RNA or pgRNA. HBV assembly begins with the formation of an “immature” nucleocapsid (NC) incorporating pgRNA, which is converted via reverse transcription within the maturing NC to the DS DNA genome. Only the mature, DS DNA-containing NCs are enveloped and secreted as virions whereas immature NCs containing RNA or single-stranded (SS) DNA are not enveloped. The current model for selective virion morphogenesis postulates that accumulation of DS DNA within the NC induces a “maturation signal” that, in turn, triggers its envelopment and secretion. However, we have found, by careful quantification of viral DNA and NCs in HBV virions secreted in vitro and in vivo, that the vast majority of HBV virions (over 90%) contained no DNA at all, indicating that NCs with no genome were enveloped and secreted as empty virions (i.e., enveloped NCs with no DNA). Furthermore, viral mutants bearing mutations precluding any DNA synthesis secreted exclusively empty virions. Thus, viral DNA synthesis is not required for HBV virion morphogenesis. On the other hand, NCs containing RNA or SS DNA were excluded from virion formation. The secretion of DS DNA-containing as well as empty virions on one hand, and the lack of secretion of virions containing single-stranded (SS) DNA or RNA on the other, prompted us to propose an alternative, “Single Strand Blocking” model to explain selective HBV morphogenesis whereby SS nucleic acid within the NC negatively regulates NC envelopment, which is relieved upon second strand DNA synthesis

Contract Design in the Shadow of Regulation

Does the threat of legal reform encourage companies to adopt high-quality contract terms that consumers ignore so that companies can use them in lobbying efforts to avoid reform? That may be an overlooked answer to a puzzle about consumer contracts. Consumers ignore most contract terms at the time of acceptance, so scholars usually expect companies to pick ignored terms of the lowest possible quality that courts will let them get away with. But some companies pick terms that are surprisingly high-quality. Courts do not require these terms that consumers ignore, so firms that pick them incur costs for seemingly little gain. This Article identifies a novel function of these terms: their audience is not courts or consumers but policymakers deciding whether to reform status quo legal rules from which companies profit. Drawing on behavioral law and economics, and illustrating with a case study of lobbying surrounding the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s bank account overdraft rule, this Article shows how companies use the high-quality terms they adopt in anticipation of regulation to “frame” the status quo rule. High-quality terms help show how the status quo rule might benefit consumers, letting companies appeal to policymakers’ cognitive biases so they are more likely to support the status quo rule. This Article addresses several practical and theoretical implications of anticipatory self-regulation to frame reform. On one hand, even the threat of legal reform might influence the kinds of contract terms businesses adopt. On the other, a small minority of contract terms can take on outsized role in policy debates about legal reform, potentially distorting policymaking. As a theoretical matter, moreover, the Article complements information revelation models of sequential policymaking by showing how actors at one stage can frame information so policymakers at a later stage resort to decision-simplifying heuristics that favor the status quo. I. Introduction II. Unexpectedly High-Quality Nonsalient Terms ... A. The Expected Race to the Bottom ... B. Puzzling Examples of High-Quality Nonsalient Terms ... 1. Overdraft Protection ... 2. Website Privacy Policies ... 3. Pro-Consumer Clauses in Relational Contracts of Adhesion ... 4. Do We See Anticipatory Self-Regulation Elsewhere? III. Anticipatory Self-Regulation and Framing Effects ... A. Framing the Status Quo in Policy Discourse with Contract Terms ... 1. Framing Effects ... 2. Contract Terms’ Salience to Policymakers ... B. Case Study: Using Anticipatory Self-Regulation to Frame Policy Choice ... 1. Status Quo Bias ... 2. Loss Aversion ... 3. Availability ... C. A General Account of Anticipatory Self-Regulation to Frame Policy ... D. Objections and Alternative Explanations ... 1. Assessing Objections … 2. Alternative Explanations to Anticipatory Self-Regulation IV. Implications ... A. Theoretical, Empirical, and Normative Implications ... B. Practical Implications for Policymakers and Reformers V. Conclusio

How the media undermined democracy

Item consists of a digitized copy of a video recording of a Vancouver Institute lecture given by James Fallows on April 10, 1999. Original video recording available in the University Archives (UBC VT 2093).Non UBCUnreviewedOthe

The Political Scientist

profile of Dr. Harold Varmus, Director of the National Institutes of Healt