Author Archive | Todd Zywicki

The GMU Law and Economics Center has just announced a slate of new programs for law professors.  This year the LEC will be doing special programs in “Risk, Injury, Liability, and Insurance,” “Public Choice Economics,” “Empirical Methods for Law Professors,” and, of course, the LEC’s traditional two-week summer seminar on “Economics for Law Professors” (to […]

For those who recall the initial proposal for the CFPB, one of the cornerstones of the agency’s agenda would be the power to provide preferential treatment for so-called “plain vanilla” financial products that lenders would be required to offer to consumers.  This proposal was a non-starter on Capitol Hill and was quickly dismissed from the […]

Confronted with consumer and tech-friendly innovations such as Uber, traditional taxicab companies have responded by the challenge of making their services less expensive and their taxis more pleasant in order to meet this new competition. Just kidding.  Of course, they have responded not by meeting competition, but by trying to use the regulatory process to […]

I have a column at Forbes.com today on the upcoming hearing on the preliminary settlement of the longstanding litigation regarding credit card interchange fees: “Set Visa, MasterCard and Markets Free: Approve the Credit Card Interchange Fee Settlement.” (My apologies: My original post had both a glitch in my syntax and a bad link.  I hope […]

I wanted to add a few words on the passing of Ronald Coase.  “The Problem of Social Cost” is the most frequently-cited law review article of all time (another count)–and its not even close.  That pretty much says it all in terms of his well-deserved fame and influence. But the amazing thing to me is […]

Well, its not like I didn’t predict that a boom time for pawn shops would be coming in the wake of the Durbin Amendment, Credit Card Act, restrictions on overdraft protection, CFPB, etc.  And now the New York Times reports that the past few years have in fact boomed as an increasing number of consumers, […]

John Taylor of  the Hoover Institution has a short post linking to an interview and his new book on rules-based economic policy.  One of his 5 principles is the importance of preserving the rule of law in times of crisis, with some kind words for my article on that theme.  Click through to the interview, […]

Following the Senate’s confirmation of Richard Cordray as Director of the CFPB, the New York Times Room for Debate did a segment on the CFPB. I was asked by the editor to contribute on what the CFPB should avoid doing. My contribution is here. The full forum is here.

Alex Chaufen has a review today at Forbes.com of The American Illness (mentioned yesterday as well).

The Canadian Competition Tribunal yesterday rejected a claim by the Canadian Competition Bureau seeking to require credit card networks to create a right to allow merchants to surcharge consumers who use credit cards for payment. Canadian consumer groups recognized this as a big win for consumers: Consumer groups were hailing the decision as a major […]

I previously mentioned the new volume edited by my colleague Frank Buckley, entitled The American Illness: Essays in the Rule of Law (to which I contributed a co-authered essay). Richard Reinsch has a review of the book today at the Liberty Law blog. Frank also recently wrote an op-ed for the National Post comparing the condition […]

The Community Financial Services Association has submitted a petition for withdrawal of the latest bit of policy-based evidence-making at the CFPB, its White Paper on Payday Lending and Deposit Advance Products.  Ballard Spahr’s CFPB Monitor blog summarizes the petition.  The critiques are clearly correct to me, most notably the lack of any support whatsoever for […]

Well, you don’t see this every day–the chief law enforcement official of the United States (a message sent to DOJ employees) is “delighted” that a federal law was declared unconstitutional.  This was forwarded to me by a DOJ lawyer: From: The Attorney General <The.Attorney.General@usdoj.gov<mailto:The.Attorney.General@usdoj.gov>> Date: June 27, 2013, 7:17:58 PM EDT To: Undisclosed recipients:; Subject: […]

The American Illness: Essays on the Rule of Law, edited by my colleague Frank Buckley, is now available from Yale University Press.  I have a contribution in the book co-authored with Jeremy Kidd of Mercer University Law School.  The list of contributors is impressive to say the least and the papers are uniformly interesting (we […]

I read Tom Wolfe’s “Back to Blood” a little while back and figured I’d pass along my thoughts for anyone who is interested.  I also commend Peter Berkowitz’s review of the book in Policy Review as one I found insightful.  I will try to avoid any spoilers. I’ve read a lot of Tom Wolfe and […]