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Willingness to Pay to Use Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat, and More: A National Survey
July 28, 2018
There has been a great deal of discussion of the welfare effects of digital goods, including social media. The discussion...
July 28, 2018
There has been a great deal of discussion of the welfare effects of digital goods, including social media. The discussion...
Impact of Driverless Cars on Insurance Not as Dire as Predicted
July 28, 2018
“We do not expect revenues for auto insurance companies to experience a sudden decline as a result of autonomous vehicles,” Alejandro Zamorano, an analyst at Bloomberg New Energy Finance, wrote Thursday in a report. “Instead we expect a gradual shift in the type of auto insurance products as well as new revenue sources for insurance companies.” That assessment contrasts with previous dire predictions for the industry. A Morgan Stanley report in 2016, entitled “Are Auto Insurers on the Road...
July 28, 2018
“We do not expect revenues for auto insurance companies to experience a sudden decline as a result of autonomous vehicles,” Alejandro Zamorano, an analyst at Bloomberg New Energy Finance, wrote Thursday in a report. “Instead we expect a gradual shift in the type of auto insurance products as well as new revenue sources for insurance companies.” That assessment contrasts with previous dire predictions for the industry. A Morgan Stanley report in 2016, entitled “Are Auto Insurers on the Road...
Heuristics and Public Policy: Decision Making Under Bounded Rationality
July 27, 2018
How do human beings make decisions when, as the evidence indicates, the assumptions of the Bayesian rationality approach in economics do not hold? Do human beings optimize, or can they? Several decades of research have shown that people possess a toolkit of heuristics to make decisions under certainty, risk, subjective uncertainty, and true uncertainty (or Knightian uncertainty). We outline recent advances in knowledge about the use of heuristics and departures from Bayesian rationality, with particular...
July 27, 2018
How do human beings make decisions when, as the evidence indicates, the assumptions of the Bayesian rationality approach in economics do not hold? Do human beings optimize, or can they? Several decades of research have shown that people possess a toolkit of heuristics to make decisions under certainty, risk, subjective uncertainty, and true uncertainty (or Knightian uncertainty). We outline recent advances in knowledge about the use of heuristics and departures from Bayesian rationality, with particular...
An Empirical Study of Dispute Resolution Clauses in International Supply Contracts
July 25, 2018
International transactions present unique legal risks. When a contract touches several different nations, a party may not know where it will be called upon to defend a lawsuit or, alternatively, which nation’s law will be applied to resolve that dispute. To mitigate these risks, parties will often write dispute resolution provisions into their contracts. Arbitration clauses and forum selection clauses help to reduce uncertainty relating to forum. Choice-of-law clauses help to reduce uncertainty...
July 25, 2018
International transactions present unique legal risks. When a contract touches several different nations, a party may not know where it will be called upon to defend a lawsuit or, alternatively, which nation’s law will be applied to resolve that dispute. To mitigate these risks, parties will often write dispute resolution provisions into their contracts. Arbitration clauses and forum selection clauses help to reduce uncertainty relating to forum. Choice-of-law clauses help to reduce uncertainty...
Law Firms Climb Aboard the AI Wagon
July 24, 2018
A growing number of legal startups now apply machine-learning techniques to these tasks. The algorithms can process much more paperwork than humans in a fraction of the time. They recognise clauses and point out anomalies. They might highlight contracts where liability is unlimited rather than limited. They can even point out contracts where key clauses are absent. The latter is something that humans do not always reliably do, says Noah Waisberg, a former corporate lawyer who founded Kira Systems,...
July 24, 2018
A growing number of legal startups now apply machine-learning techniques to these tasks. The algorithms can process much more paperwork than humans in a fraction of the time. They recognise clauses and point out anomalies. They might highlight contracts where liability is unlimited rather than limited. They can even point out contracts where key clauses are absent. The latter is something that humans do not always reliably do, says Noah Waisberg, a former corporate lawyer who founded Kira Systems,...
Pasquale on Jeffersonian & Hamiltonian Visions of Tech Platforms
July 22, 2018
Frank A. Pasquale (University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law) has posted Tech Platforms and the Knowledge Problem (American Affairs, Summer 2018, at 3) on SSRN. Here is the abstract: Jeffersonians call for a new era of antitrust enforcement to break up giant firms. These populist and localist critics of leading technology platforms, megabanks, and health care behemoths are decentralizers. They believe that, in a just society, power must be widely dispersed. They promote strong...
July 22, 2018
Frank A. Pasquale (University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law) has posted Tech Platforms and the Knowledge Problem (American Affairs, Summer 2018, at 3) on SSRN. Here is the abstract: Jeffersonians call for a new era of antitrust enforcement to break up giant firms. These populist and localist critics of leading technology platforms, megabanks, and health care behemoths are decentralizers. They believe that, in a just society, power must be widely dispersed. They promote strong...
Sunstein, Reisch, & Kaiser on Trusting Nudges
July 21, 2018
Cass R. Sunstein (Harvard Law School; Harvard University - Harvard Kennedy School (HKS)), Lucia A. Reisch (Copenhagen Business School - Department of Management, Society and Communication; Zeppelin University CCMP - Center for Consumers Markets Politics), & Micha Kaiser (University of Hohenheim) have posted Trusting Nudges? Lessons from an International Survey on SSRN. Here is the abstract: In the past decade, policymakers have increasingly used behaviourally informed policies, including...
July 21, 2018
Cass R. Sunstein (Harvard Law School; Harvard University - Harvard Kennedy School (HKS)), Lucia A. Reisch (Copenhagen Business School - Department of Management, Society and Communication; Zeppelin University CCMP - Center for Consumers Markets Politics), & Micha Kaiser (University of Hohenheim) have posted Trusting Nudges? Lessons from an International Survey on SSRN. Here is the abstract: In the past decade, policymakers have increasingly used behaviourally informed policies, including...
Allstate CEO: AI Will Thrash the Economy Like a ‘Tsunami’
July 21, 2018
Artificial intelligence is coming for the service economy, according to Allstate Corp. Chief Executive Officer Tom Wilson. “It’s going to rip through this economy like a tsunami,” Wilson said Thursday in an interview on Bloomberg TV from Aspen, Colorado. Automation will affect a wide swath of workers, from traders to taxi drivers. McKinsey & Co. estimates that more than 400 million people worldwide could be looking for work by 2030 because technology took their jobs. That change...
July 21, 2018
Artificial intelligence is coming for the service economy, according to Allstate Corp. Chief Executive Officer Tom Wilson. “It’s going to rip through this economy like a tsunami,” Wilson said Thursday in an interview on Bloomberg TV from Aspen, Colorado. Automation will affect a wide swath of workers, from traders to taxi drivers. McKinsey & Co. estimates that more than 400 million people worldwide could be looking for work by 2030 because technology took their jobs. That change...
Zamir and Teichman on Behavioral Law & Economics
July 19, 2018
Eyal Zamir and Doron Teichman (Hebrew University of Jerusalem - Faculty of Law and Hebrew University of Jerusalem - Faculty of Law) have posted Behavioral Law and Economics - Introduction (Behavioral Law and Economics, Oxford University Press, 2018) on SSRN. Here is the abstract: In the past few decades, economic analysis of law has been challenged by a growing body of experimental and empirical studies that attest to prevalent and systematic deviations from the assumptions of economic rationality....
July 19, 2018
Eyal Zamir and Doron Teichman (Hebrew University of Jerusalem - Faculty of Law and Hebrew University of Jerusalem - Faculty of Law) have posted Behavioral Law and Economics - Introduction (Behavioral Law and Economics, Oxford University Press, 2018) on SSRN. Here is the abstract: In the past few decades, economic analysis of law has been challenged by a growing body of experimental and empirical studies that attest to prevalent and systematic deviations from the assumptions of economic rationality....
Buying the Verdict
July 17, 2018
OVERVIEW — This paper documents systematic evidence that firms engage in specialized, locally targeted advertising when...
July 17, 2018
OVERVIEW — This paper documents systematic evidence that firms engage in specialized, locally targeted advertising when...
