“More Than You Wanted to Know is clearly an important, persuasive, and meticulously researched book. Its core claim is that mandatory disclosure is an oft-used regulatory technique that has repeatedly failed to help individuals make better decisions in complex and unfamiliar settings. More controversially, Ben-Shahar and Schneider argue that this failing of mandatory disclosure is largely insurmountable, because most people (i) have little reason to read disclosed information in the first place, (ii) cannot understand such information even when they want to, and (iii) are unable to translate such information into better decision-making. Although I ultimately believe that Ben-Shahar and Schneider are overly pessimistic about the capacity of modernized disclosures (such as the mortgage disclosure composed by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau) to improve decision-making, their skepticism on this front is both reasonable and persuasively defended …” (more)
[Daniel Schwarcz, ContractsProf Blog, 23 September]
First posted 2014-09-24 06:28:44
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