Failure of Mandated Disclosures

PLA often posts links to scholarly articles assessing or speculating about the effectiveness, from a consumer-protection standpoint, of disclosure and other regulatory regimes.  Past such posts include, for example, “Behaviorally Informed Financial Services Regulation,” “The Cost of Anchoring on Credit-Card Minimum Payments,” “Insights from Behavioral Economics for Personal Finance,” and “Regulating Consumer Financial Products: Evidence from Credit Cards.”

Today PLA posts a link to “The Failure of Mandated Disclosures” by Omri Ben-Shahar and Carl E. Schneider.  This article “explores the spectacular prevalence, and failure, of the single most common technique for protecting personal autonomy in modern society: mandated disclosure.”  The article will doubtless be read with interest by those who have devoted significant portions of their careers to implementing or complying with disclosure regimes such as Regulation Z.