Catching My Eye

Two articles recently abstracted in the SSRN digests I receive weekly have caught my eye.

The first is authored by cross-town friend and UH law prof Jim Hawkins (pictured) and is titled  "Doctors as Bankers: Evidence from Fertility Markets."  The article will be published by the Tulane Law Review.  Here's the abstract:

In a variety of medical contexts, doctors play a prominent role as bankers, lending directly to patients or arranging for patients to obtain loans from third party lenders. This Article offers evidence of this activity from fertility markets based on an empirical study of virtually every fertility clinics’ website in the United States and on interviews with key market participants. I find that doctors play an important role in patients’ decisions about credit, discussing credit with patients and even recommending and promoting specific lenders to patients while excluding consideration of other potential lenders.

Despite the prevalence of this conduct, the law does not generally regulate doctors as bankers. Patients are largely left unprotected by current regulations, but they face significant problems when doctors act as bankers. Patients, vulnerable to their physicians’ suggestions, often uncritically accept financial advice from their doctor. Instead of shopping for the best loan, they take the loan their doctor selects for them. But, doctors face a conflict of interest when choosing which lender to recommend because different lenders charge physicians different amounts when patients pay with loans. Also, patients are often left confused when doctors present piecemeal information about lenders, and patients end up taking out loans with unfavorable terms.

In light of these problems, I offer a potential regulatory framework to regulate doctors acting as bankers. I suggest that regulations should require doctors to disclose the basic loan information that the Truth in Lending Act currently requires that lenders disclose. Moreover, policymakers should require physicians to disclose the financial arrangement between themselves and the lenders they recommend and, if they recommend lenders, to recommend at least three potential lenders to patients to encourage price shopping.

The second is written by friend, co-blogger, and Case Western law prof  Jacqueline Lipton (pictured).    Jacqui's article is titled "Mapping Online Privacy" and will be published in the Northwestern Law Review.  Here's the abstract:

Privacy scholars have recently outlined difficulties in applying existing concepts of personal privacy to the maturing Internet. With Web 2.0 technologies, more people have more opportunities to post information about themselves and others online, often with scant regard for individual privacy. Shifting notions of 'reasonable expectations of privacy' in the context of blogs, wikis, and online social networks create challenges for privacy regulation. Courts and commentators struggle with Web 2.0 privacy incursions without the benefit of a clear regulatory framework. This article offers a map of privacy that might help delineate at least the outer boundaries of Web 2.0 privacy. The aim is to develop an umbrella under which individual aspects of privacy may be collected and examined, along with their relationships to each other. The key aspects of privacy identified are: (i) actors/relationships; (ii) privacy-threatening conduct; (iii) motivations; (iv) harms/remedies; (v) nature of private information; and, (vi) format of information. The author suggests that by examining these aspects of privacy, and their inter-relationships, we might gain a more comprehensive picture of online privacy. We might also gain a better idea of precisely where Web 2.0 technologies are putting pressure on the  boundaries of traditional notions of privacy.

Consider downloading one or both manuscripts and adding them to your reading list.

Comments

[Jacqui L.]

Tim - I'm blushing! I hope our readers aren't disappointed in the article (and I would of course welcome comments about it). I should point out that my piece was part of a FANTASTIC symposium at Northwestern organized by Jim Speta. The entire symposium edition of the law review should make extremely interesting reading. It was an interdisciplinary symposium on aspects of maturing Internet studies. I highly commend Jim for all his work putting it together and to the law review (and in particular Kevin King) for putting the publication together. I also think that Jim Hawkins article sounds most interesting and will definitely read it - seems to raise some antitrust (ie tying) issues if I'm not mistaken?

[Robin Smith]

Really awesome information..Well done.Thanks a lot for this post.

http://studentsblog2.blogspot.com/2009/09/basics-of-student-loan-programs.html