Black Metropolis Research Consortium
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Pride and Prejudice: Same-Sex Marriage Legalization Announcements and Hate Crimes
Get PDFIn this paper, we examine whether same-sex marriage legalization announcements impact the occurrence of hate crimes against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people. Using a difference-in-differences design, we exploit the variation in the timing of same-sex marriage legalization announcements across states. On average, a same-sex marriage legalization announcement reduces the anti-LGBT hate crime rate by .112 per 100,000 people, although some additional analyses have weaker results. Decreases are mostly driven by reductions in violent crimes. Event-study estimates show that results fade after 1 year and provide evidence that reductions are not due to changes in social trends before an announcement. Our results demonstrate that salient, progressive LGBT policy announcements may, by themselves, effectively reduce anti-LGBT hate crimes
The Effects of Naloxone Access Laws on Opioid Abuse, Mortality, and Crime
No full textThe United States is experiencing an epidemic of opioid abuse. In response, states have implemented policies including increased access to naloxone, a drug that can save lives when administered during an overdose. There is a concern that widespread naloxone access may unintentionally lead to increased or riskier opioid use by reducing the risk of death from overdose, however. In this paper, we use the staggered timing of state-level naloxone access laws as a natural experiment to measure the effects of broadening access to this lifesaving drug. We find that broadened access led to more opioid-related emergency room visits and more opioid-related theft, with no net measurable reduction in opioid-related mortality. We conclude that naloxone has a clear and important role in harm reduction, yet its ability to combat the opioid epidemic’s death toll may be limited without complementary efforts
Does the Threat of Overthrow Discipline the Elites? Evidence from a Laboratory Experiment
No full textThe threat of revolution disciplines the elites, inducing them to strategically share some of their wealth to prevent social unrest. This behavioral conjecture is prominently used to explain franchise extension and welfare-state expansion. We test this conjecture in a controlled laboratory experiment. We model a society whose members can produce wealth by coordinating conflicting interests. Coordination is facilitated through a status ranking. Compliance with the ranking yields an efficient yet inequitable payoff distribution. Between treatments, we vary whether overthrows—which reset the status ranking via collective disobedience—are possible and whether voluntary redistributive transfers—which high-status players can use to appease low-status players—are available. In contrast to established thinking, we find that, on average, the threat of being overthrown does not lead to more wealth sharing, as high-status players fail to provide sufficient redistribution to prevent overthrows
Personalized Law: Different Rules for Different People
No full textShould uniformity of legal rules give way to personalized law? Should different people be bound by the own personally tailored law? The “reasonable person” standard would be replaced by a multitude of personalized “reasonable you” commands. Skilled doctors would be held to higher standards of care, vulnerable consumers would receive stronger protections, age licensing to engage in risky activity, like driving or the purchase of alcohol, would vary according to each person’s idiosyncratic risk, and criminal fines would increase with income. If personalized law could reduce societal risks and reallocate duties and protections where they are needed most, should we welcome it? Would it destroy equality under the law? Omri Ben-Shahar presented the ideas developed in his recent book with Ariel Porat, “Personalized Law.
Reducing Prejudice Through Law: Evidence from Experimental Psychology
Get PDFCan antidiscrimination law effect changes in public attitudes toward minority groups? Could learning, for instance, that employment discrimination against people with clinical depression is legally prohibited cause members of the public to be more accepting toward people with mental health conditions? In this Article, we report the results of a series of experiments that test the effect of inducing the belief that discrimination against a given group is legal (versus illegal) on interpersonal attitudes toward members of that group. We find that learning that discrimination is unlawful does not simply lead people to believe that an employer is more likely to face punishment for discriminatory behavior. It also leads some people to report less prejudicial attitudes and greater feelings of interpersonal warmth toward members of that group. Conversely, when people learn that the law tolerates discrimination against a group, it can license more prejudicial attitudes. Importantly, we demonstrate that individuals vary substantially in the degree to which they view courts as legitimate authorities and that these orientations systematically moderate the degree to which—and even the direction in which—prejudicial attitudes shift in response to legal rules
Should There Be Corporate Governance Police?
Get PDFIf a company misbehaves, lawsuits are one way of providing a remedy and encouraging that company and others to behave in the future. If the misbehavior is securities fraud, there are two potential plaintiffs—traders allegedly injured by the fraud may bring a private suit, and the government (through the SEC or DOJ) may sue to enforce the public interest in truthful disclosures of corporate information. If the misbehavior is violations of corporate governance rules, however, only private suits are available. Despite the parallel rationales for marrying private and public attorneys general, the toolkit for protecting the public interest in corporate governance is not as well stocked. This essay imagines what a government cause of action might look like for alleged corporate governance wrongdoing. Many of the pathologies of current corporate governance litigation may be ameliorated by a state-based, public cause of action for breaches of fiduciary duty. Although not without downsides, putting Delaware’s Corporate Governance Police on the beat may improve the governance of American companies, while reducing the amount of vexatious litigation
The FTC and the CPRA’s Regulation of Dark Patterns in Cookie Consent Notices
Get PDFDark patterns are designed to confuse and manipulate users to select the option preferred by website owners. Dark patterns are especially prevalent in cookie consent notices, which are notices that websites display to inquire users regarding their cookie preferences. Cookies are often used by websites to track and store user information for functional and marketing purposes. Dark patterns exploit various psychological biases, and the interaction among the biases will likely exacerbate their effects. This Article examines 100 cookie consent notices from the most popular ecommerce websites in the United States and offers a set of empirical data on the current landscape of dark patterns in cookie consent notices. Based on our results and analysis, most cookie consent notices we examined are likely considered unfair and deceptive under Section 5 of the FTC Act. Moreover, under the CPRA legal framework, most notices are also considered coercive and manipulative. Future regulators should focus on the design of online consent mechanisms to better protect consumer interest in privacy
Optional Price Discrimination
Get PDFPrice discrimination gets a bad rap. It is associated with the exploitation of monopoly power and with opportunistically extracting surplus from consumers. As merchants develop ever-more-powerful mechanisms for gathering and compiling information about consumers, the specter of fully personalized pricing seems to loom as an ominous threat. Despite past economic defenses of price discrimination as an efficient and even consumer-friendly move in some contexts,1 recent writing highlights the perceived unfairness of tailoring prices to willingness to pay, especially when this is accomplished through “big data.”2
Yet a parallel phenomenon quietly coexists with all this distress over personalized prices: models that encourage people to voluntarily contribute, typically in varying amounts, the sums necessary to cover the fixed costs of producing new goods or services. That nonprofits rely on forms of “voluntary price discrimination” to cover their costs has been understood for decades.3 “Provision point mechanisms” that make production of a good or service contingent on reaching a threshold of voluntary contributions have a long history, as well as a modern presence in models like Kickstarter’s.4 Firms, artists, and organizations have also experimented with “pay what you want” models in a variety of contexts. 5
This paper explores the possibility of enabling customers to opt into price discrimination6 in settings where it might serve socially valuable purposes— from extending access to lower-income consumers, to facilitating the provision of products that serve small or niche markets, to accomplishing social goals in tandem with consumption. It builds on the rationale for Ramsey pricing, a form of surplus-maximizing price discrimination that covers fixed costs through prices that inversely correlate with buyers’ elasticity, subject to a profit constraint.7 An opt-in model, similarly constrained, could add structure to existing voluntary provision models and enable them to be expanded into new domains.
Such an approach might be accepted by many consumers. Despite the overheated rhetoric around price tailoring, consumers do not always object to the personalization of price. Haggling is an age-old8 form of price discrimination that many customers willingly tolerate or even enjoy. The difference is that consumers perceive themselves to be voluntary participants in the negotiation process, not unwitting marks being fleeced by a corporate algorithm.9 Presumably, they also overwhelmingly believe (even though, statistically, they must often be wrong) that they are getting a better-than-average price. Optional price discrimination similarly extends control to consumers, but, unlike haggling, can be structured in ways that ensure those consumers are made better off as a result,
The analysis here proceeds in three parts. Part I explains how price discrimination works, surveys the reasons for hostility to it, and outlines its potential advantages for consumers as well as sellers.10 By offering alternative ways to cover fixed costs, price discrimination can generate benefits like broader access to products and a wider variety of products. Part II reviews some existing forms of voluntary price discrimination that pursue these goals. Part III examines how an optional approach to price discrimination might be extended into additional contexts. It considers how such an approach could be structured to mutually benefit consumers and firms, and considers the role of government in facilitating it.
Although there are a variety of different forms that optional price discrimination might take, the approaches I have in mind here would give the consumer a genuine choice whether or not to participate in personalized pricing, and would involve specific, clear representations about the terms on which that pricing will be applied. Such clarity serves two purposes, beyond the obvious one of letting consumers know what is on offer. First, it facilitates actions based on fraudulent misrepresentations if merchants provide misleading or false information about their pricing practices. Second, the existence of transparently presented and fully voluntary forms of personalized pricing may help to crowd out forms of price discrimination that do not share these attributes.
The approach to price discrimination developed here is optional in the sense of being voluntary on the part of consumer-participants. It is also optional in a second sense: it contemplates enabling consumers to effectively write or exercise options to buy goods and services based on their valuations.11 Such options could leave consumers—both collectively and individually—better off than under uniform pricing.1
Does Amazon Exercise Its Market Power? Evidence from Toys“R”Us
Get PDFSince its founding, Amazon has established a reputation for being consumer friendly by consistently offering lower prices than its market position would seem to allow. However, recent antitrust concerns about dominant online platforms have revived questions about whether Amazon’s growing market share threatens consumer welfare. Given its reputation, regulators have proposed a new focus on conduct unrelated to prices. We ask whether such a move is premature. Using the sudden and unanticipated US exit of Toys“R”Us as a natural experiment, we find that Amazon’s toy prices on its US site increased by almost 5 percent in the wake of the exit relative to similar products and to toys on its Canadian site. Thus, despite Amazon’s long-standing reputation, it may exploit increases in market power in traditional ways as competing retailers cease operating
Creditors’ Rights, Threat of Liquidation, and the Labor and Capital Choices of Firms
Get PDFIn 2002, India introduced a legal reform that allowed secured creditors to seize and liquidate a defaulter’s assets, thereby strengthening creditors’ rights. We study the impact of the legal change on firms’ real decisions regarding their capital and labor, exploiting variation in their prepolicy proportion of collateralizable assets. We find that firms increased employment and reduced their capital investments. These effects are especially strong for firms in regions with less-efficient courts. Our results are consistent with an increased threat of liquidation for firms following the passage of the law