Alejandro Brito Ramrez!

A01332556!
Company & Intellectual Property Law!
Reading Report!
Consumer & Antitrust Law Art, Yale!
Since 1914 there has been a commission named for the protection and welfare of the
consumer, the FTC, Federal Trade Commission, created thanks to the statements
established in the FTCA, the Federal Trade Commission Act. This independent branch of
the US government establishes the bases of an fair and right commerce, as well as it is in
charge of the defense of the consumer rights. The general objective of this commission
can be defined as taking care of the consumer protection and not letting antitrust grow. !
Being a non-experienced institution at its beginning the commission had several problems
protecting and fighting against companies that didnt had the maximization of the
consumer welfare as their primary objective, this issue gave doubts to people about if
their could handle the problems with companies, so the government had to interfere within
the problems making each state to create a consumer protection laws. The main
statements of this laws defined the prohibited acts with a list of actions that deemed or
expected to be harmful or non-welfare to consumers, but focusing on consumer fraud. This
types of frauds were presented when companies made misleading trade identification or
false/deceptive advertising. !
Some problems came up when the states created their own acts for consumer protection
and did not had in mind the FTC agreements, because each one established their own
definitions of the problems and had different ways to deal with the problems. After some
years the state consumer protection laws advanced and were developed with more
accurate and fair consumer-welfare driven focus. While the institutions were arguing about
how to apply the different laws, the consumers evolved and started developing behaviors
and theories, giving the committee something more to add to the acts. One of this
behaviors could be described as consumer welfare is increased when consumers are
better able to satisfy their desires through transparent and accurate transactions. This
behaviors created a great impact impulsing a further analysis of them. !
Another commission came up, one that had a greater and better established analysis of
consumer behaviors, the CFPB, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. This new
institution came up thinking that they can improve consumer decision making by altering
and standardizing the design of costumer products, specifically financial products, to
reduce behavioral prejudices. So the CFPB arrived to take a more aimed and accurate
approach at correcting well-known consumer welfare reducing market failures as well as
prejudices consumers in order to identify their true preferences. A strategy that the CFPB
started using was to standardize products after a pre-approval and review, in order to give
the consumer the chance of take the decision of a product between several standardized
products. In order to get a standardized product the producers had to pass a several and
specific requirements. The adoption of behavioral theories show a great advancement of
behavioral economics within governments.