1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910826005303321

Autore

Ben-Shahar Omri

Titolo

More than you wanted to know : the failure of mandated disclosure / / Omri Ben-Shahar, Carl E. Schneider

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Princeton, New Jersey : , : Princeton University Press, , 2014

©2014

ISBN

1-4008-5038-X

Edizione

[Course Book]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (244 p.)

Classificazione

PU 5330

Disciplina

346.7302/1

Soggetti

Disclosure of information - Law and legislation - United States

Consumer protection - Law and legislation - United States

Decision making - United States

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Includes index.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references (pages 197-223) and index.

Nota di contenuto

Front matter -- Contents -- Preface -- Part I. The Ubiquity of Mandated Disclosure -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Complex Decisions, Complex Disclosures -- 3. The Failure of Mandated Disclosure -- Part II. Why Disclosures Fail -- 4. "Whatever": The Psychology of Mandated Disclosure -- 5. Reading Disclosures -- 6. The Quantity Question -- 7. From Disclosure to Decision -- Part III. Can Mandated Disclosure Be Saved? -- 8. Make It Simple? -- 9. The Politics of Disclosure -- 10. Producing Disclosures -- 11. At Worst, Harmless? -- 12. Conclusion: Beyond Disclosurism -- Notes -- Index

Sommario/riassunto

Perhaps no kind of regulation is more common or less useful than mandated disclosure-requiring one party to a transaction to give the other information. It is the iTunes terms you assent to, the doctor's consent form you sign, the pile of papers you get with your mortgage. Reading the terms, the form, and the papers is supposed to equip you to choose your purchase, your treatment, and your loan well. More Than You Wanted to Know surveys the evidence and finds that mandated disclosure rarely works. But how could it? Who reads these disclosures? Who understands them? Who uses them to make better choices? Omri Ben-Shahar and Carl Schneider put the regulatory problem in human terms. Most people find disclosures complex,



obscure, and dull. Most people make choices by stripping information away, not layering it on. Most people find they can safely ignore most disclosures and that they lack the literacy to analyze them anyway. And so many disclosures are mandated that nobody could heed them all. Nor can all this be changed by simpler forms in plainer English, since complex things cannot be made simple by better writing. Furthermore, disclosure is a lawmakers' panacea, so they keep issuing new mandates and expanding old ones, often instead of taking on the hard work of writing regulations with bite. Timely and provocative, More Than You Wanted to Know takes on the form of regulation we encounter daily and asks why we must encounter it at all.