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Outsourcing manufacturing to a contract manufacturer is a growing practice that has gained global prominence since the turn of the century. This business practice is common in pharmaceutical and electronics industries, and has now also become common practice in consumer product supply chains. This practice has many challenges; in most cases it does not achieve its intended objectives, with a number of contract manufacturing companies (CMCs) in South Africa going out of business. Research and the literature on contract manufacturing is predominantly focused on the aspects of contract manufacturing and its role and impact in the supply chain. However, there are very few, if any, scholarly articles on the factors that make CMCs in the consumer products supply chain in South Africa succeed and become sustainable businesses and strategic partners to their brand owner customers. This study aimed to fill this gap by identifying, through empirical research of experts in contract manufacturing, the factors that are critical for contract manufacturers to succeed and to be sustainable businesses that can contribute to the success of their clients. Several critical success factors were identified using a Delphi survey of experts who had experience working with CMCs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Zeitschrift für Bankrecht und Bankwirtschaft is the property of De Gruyter and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

There is a rich and diverse literature on contract law and equality, discussing whether contract law should advance social equality and if so how should contract law achieve that. However, this literature has yet to address the State's role in combating social inequality through contract law. Filling this void this Article discusses three strategies the State can and should adopt in promoting social equality, by enforcing contracts, applying contract law doctrines, and regulating and legislating laws as background rules. After mapping these three state powers the Article further explores three test cases: enforcing nonmarital agreements, applying contract defenses in consumer contracts, and enacting the Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Act that voids mandatory arbitration agreements in sexual harassment and sexual assault cases. Based on this analysis, the Article concludes that contract law is not purely private, but rather has public aspects; that the State is an important facilitator in promoting equality; and that the State should use its different powers in concert to promote equality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of „automated decision making” (ADM) is currently a key vector reshaping industries in the era of technology-based decision making, and the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in this process is a hot topic worldwide with the adoption of generative AI tools like ChatGPT. ADM enables companies to use technology for tasks that were not long ago the domain of human judgment. AI is essential in financial services, such as credit worthiness assessment, automated investment advice (often called robo-advice) or insurance. The regulation of activities related to ADM is contained in various acts and regulations, including the Sale of Goods Directive 2019/771, the Digital Contracts Directives 2019/770 and the EU General Regulation on Data Protection. However, these directives do not contain special rules for new technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI). Although recently, the EU has moved forward with regulations on product liability laws affecting digital products and services, with the EU Data Act, the EU Cyber Resilience Act and the highly publicized EU AI Act - regulations with a transition period of two years for compliance, the speed with which in practice the ADM tools are developed and trained make the legislative efforts slow and incomprehensible. In light of this issue, this article explores the relationship between AI, ADM and discusses whether existing EU consumer law is equipped to deal with situations where AI systems are either used for internal purposes by companies or offered to consumers as the main subject of the contract. The paper will reveal a number of gaps in current EU consumer law and briefly discuss future legislation. This article also reviews the efficiency of key EU consumer law directives for the conclusion of contracts with consumers through the use of AI, with recommendations for clarifications and additions to improve the use of ADM.

The aim of the paper is to provide a reconstructive reading of the case Bank M in the light of the core principles of the system of protection established by Directive 93/13, as well as, more generally, the regulation of restitutionary remedies derivable from national laws and the general principles of EU law. The analysis takes particularly into account the Italian civil lawyer's point of view, as before the advent of Bank M, the Italian Supreme Court had already ruled on the same subject, establishing an unprecedented version of the condictio: an asymmetrical condictio, which has been defined, with a significant expression, as 'protective condictio indebiti'. Since both Courts allow the non professional party to pursue restitutory claims to which the professional party is not entitled as well, one might be led to believe that the same starting question was resolved in the same way in both cases, and therefore that, as a result of the case Bank M, a 'protective condictio indebiti' such as that established by the Italian Supreme Court can be said to have been established (also) in European contract law. However, for the reasons to be explained below, it is believed that the CJEU did not intend to introduce a unilateral or asymmetrical claim for recovery of undue payment, but merely permitted the consumer to demand what, under domestic law, he or she would have obtained by exercising the general action of unjust enrichment. It will be seen how the general content of restitutory protection is articulated in the system established by the UCTD, in the light of the most relevant ECJ's case-law on this subject, with the ultimate aim of verifying whether the 'protective condictio indebiti' outlined by Italian case-law can enter fully into European contract law. 156 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Copyright of Frónesis is the property of Universidad del Zulia (Fronesis) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article discusses the auctioning of financial contracts by aggregations of consumers who aim to reduce the spot price of a concentrated industry's product; this is a frequent arrangement in electricity markets. The contracts' underlying asset is the product; the auctions' bidding variable is the strike price; and the bidders are the producers. Using a three-stage complete-information game, we show that when all consumers belong to some group, in the subgame perfect Nash equilibrium, each group fully hedges its consumption, and total output reaches its efficient level. Otherwise, each group over-hedges its consumption, and total production is below the efficiency level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When determining the optimal deductible level for an insurance policy, a policyholder faces two limitations. First, uncertainty arises from the randomness of future losses. Second, the opacity of the functional forms of the policyholder's loss distribution and utility function contributes to additional limitations. While the academic literature focuses on the former, we additionally include limited information on these functional forms in our model setting to reflect real-world decision-making. That is, we draw on an expected utility framework and analyze the relationship between optimal deductible levels under limited and full information. We also derive several decision rules under limited information in order to approximate the optimal deductible level under full information. To support real-world decision-making, these rules could be easily implemented in an online decision aid offered by an insurance broker, a comparison portal for insurance contracts or a consumer protection agency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study aimed to address aspects of consumer protection in ecommerce contracts according to Jordanian law, given the severe risks involved in the stages of concluding and implementing electronic agreements, and to demonstrate the mechanisms and aspects of protection that ensure a balance between the parties to consumer relations, thus contributing to removing the risk from the consumer and avoiding damages if they occur. The researcher followed the descriptive analytical approach in his study by listing the relevant legal texts and analyzing them. The study concluded with several results, most notably: that the consumer's right to information and insight is achieved through identifying the provider's personality, describing the product or service subject of the contract, and indicating the basic features of the commodity or service. The agreement, and in its absence, the consumer may fall victim to fraud and imitation. Likewise, the consumer's right when concluding the electronic contract, the seller's obligation to deliver the comparable sale, and the consumer's right to withdraw. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Zeitschrift für Bankrecht und Bankwirtschaft is the property of De Gruyter and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Computer und Recht is the property of De Gruyter and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Journal of Anbar University for Law & Political Sciences is the property of Republic of Iraq Ministry of Higher Education & Scientific Research (MOHESR) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

There have been at least two dominant forces at work in the realm of consumer contracting over tile past several decades. One has been the rise and domination of the standard form contract (whereby merchants contract with consumers via the use of standardized, boilerplate terms and conditions that consumers do not read or understand). Tile second force has been the rise of e-commerce and the purchase of goods and services via websites and other online platforms, and the use of "wrap" formation methodology (whereby merchants obtain consumer assent to the online terms and conditions via the consumer's informal click, scroll, or browse of the merchant's website through the use of "browsewrap," "clickwrap, and similar mechanisms). Moreover, it is apparent that most retail merchants impose numerous favorable terms in their online terms and conditions, but do not impose any terms on their in-person, or "offline, customers that purchase at their brick-and-mortar locations. Why? This Article utilizes John Suler's Online Disinhibition Effect to potentially explain this behavior. The Online Disinhibition Effect describes the phenomenon that people are less restrained in what they say and do online than when they are in the face-to-face world. We see this in the way people interact on social media-in messaging each other, and even in email. People are emboldened to act in the online context because the Internet lacks the traditional social checks that constrain in-person social interaction. Although Sulerfocused his observations on individuals'social activity online, this Article seeks to use them to partially explain consumers' and merchants' contract activity-that is, their ready and uninhibited willingness to enter into, and impose, online terms and conditions. Looking at Suler's factors such as dissociative anonymity, invisibility, and asynchronicity, the fact that no humans tend to interact or react to one another in the online formotion process generally reduces any opportunity for inhibitions to the terms to be imposed. Given that merchants are even less inhibited in imposing robust and favorable terms in the online context than they are in the obline brick-and-mortar context, courts should give particular care when analyzing the fairness of such terms, whether under principles of unconscionability or otherwise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Online terms-of-use (TOUs) are the most widely used form contracts in human history. But TOUs are as poorly understood as they are ubiquitous. Their proliferation has fueled a yawning gap between contract law and consumer reality. The notion that users read and understand online TOUs, disproven in academic research, is the subject of pop culture mockery. Yet contract law assumes something very different. Because classic legal doctrines apply to online contracts, consumers routinely find themselves legally bound to contracts they have not--and often could not--read. In this Article, we evaluate the law and linguistics of a critical area of consumer contracting: smartphone-based social platforms. Our interdisciplinary study examines an original dataset of 195 contracts (TOUs, privacy policies, and community guidelines) for seventy-five apps. Our analysis highlights a decoupling of contract doctrine and consumer reality in the smartphone age of online contracting. Our results show that this divergence is fueled by extraordinary volume, complexity, and asymmetries in platform-to-consumer contracts. In addition, our results offer evidence that the decoupling has grown in recent years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Consumers rarely understand contracts offered by sellers. It does not make sense for consumers to invest in understanding these contracts because they are typically complex, time and attention are limited, and the value at stake is often low. Because consumers don’t understand contracts and information sharing among consumers is costly, sellers can profit by drafting contracts that harm consumers more than they benefit sellers. Sellers who would like to offer efficient contracts face competitive pressures not to do so because consumers who do not understand contracts cannot appreciate the benefits. Ideally, contracts would be simpler and easier to understand, but regulators don’t know the optimal complexity for each contract. Sellers know the value of the contract, but do not internalize the costs of complexity. To the contrary, sellers can benefit from making contracts more complex than necessary to obscure anti-consumer terms. This article proposes a new solution to this famous problem: a tax that sellers would pay to present a contract to consumers, coupled with a subsidy to consumers who comprehend contracts and share information. The tax would be proportionate to the cost consumers would incur if they invested in comprehending the contract. It would be assessed wheneversellers presented a contract, regardless of whether or not consumers signed. We show that this tax and subsidy solution would cause sellers to make their contracts simpler to reduce their own tax burdens. Thus, sellers would internalize the comprehension costs that they can currently impose on consumers. We demonstrate that sellers can be compelled to forego strategic obfuscation if this tax is paired with a subsidy to encourage consumer comprehension and information sharing. This tax and subsidy pairing would penalize inefficient contracts while minimizing the burden on efficient contracts. Inefficient contracts would thereby become financially unsustainable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Verba Iuris is the property of Universidad Libre Bogota, Centre de Investigaciones Socio Juridicas de la Facultad de Derecho and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Foreign-owned banks from the European Union dominate Serbia's financial landscape. However, one of the controversies in the banking sector in the last decades has been approval and similar fees in loan contracts. The aim of this paper is to take a look at this issue through the lens of a consumer. Since there is no official data on the aggregate amount of processing, approval and similar fees in thousands of lawsuits against banks, the methodology in this research is largely based on the analysis of relevant legal acts and case law. A minor part is the statistical analysis of the context of the consolidation process in the banking sector in the last decade. The research has found multiple issues in the application of the rule of law in regard to consumer loans. Not only did banks prepare loan contracts with provisions that allowed them to deduct one-off payments of approval and similar fees from a loan amount, but customers may have paid for approving, disbursing and managing a loan twice or even multiple times. There were also cases showing that the process of approving a loan did not meet the requirements of providing the customer with adequate information in a pre-contractual phase, leading to questions on transparency and the balance between a bank and its customer. Future research would benefit from quantitative data about the amount of approval and similar fees in lawsuits and the exact number of lawsuits against banks in this respect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a critical presentation of the CJEU case-law on UCTD, with particular reference to the non-filling of the contractual gap resulting from the unfairness test by applying 'dispositive' law or supplementary interpretation. The result contradicts the principles and methods of national civil law: not only does the balance in the contract suffer under the position the CJEU has chosen, as it creates alternated forms of balance of interests rather than the identical ones sought by the parties, but moreover, the increasing number of different cases imposes an ambiguous approach on the CJEU, since European judges have to ask on a case-by-case basis what the best interest of the consumer is. By adopting such a functional approach in favour of the substantive justice of the contract, the ECJ decided with questionable results with regard to national civil law, while methodological legal questions as to whether the contract should stand as it is, following the unfairness test, or whether a supplementation of the contract should take place are still open. It is therefore of critical importance to achieve an optimal combination between a fair balance of the contract and effective consumer protection. 423 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines the development of the case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) on the consequences of (non-)transparency claims in consumer contracts in the case of the supply of intellectual (legal) services. In its recent decision (Case C-395/21, D V), the CJEU was confronted with the consequences of the unfairness of the remuneration term contained in a legal services contract. The Court's analysis of the non-transparency (and unfairness) of core terms under Articles 4 para 2 and 5 UCTD and its consequences under Article 6 UCDT raises a variety of questions. Specifically, the D V case illustrates the difficulties of the CJEU in striking an adequate and effective balance between consumer protection on the one hand and the right of the business party (lawyer) to her/his counter-performance (the remuneration) for the legal services on the other hand. This, in a nutshell, is because the unfairness of the term led—like most mortgage loan agreements denominated in foreign currency—to the invalidity of the whole price-setting mechanism, depriving the supplier of his/her remuneration in its entirety. Against this backdrop, the paper will address the troublesome relationship among the unfairness of core terms encompassed in consumer contracts providing intellectual services, restitutionary remedies and judicial revision of the unfair terms, alternatively leading to situations of consumer over-protection and under-protection. First, the paper will highlight why this case law poses new challenges for both consumer and national law and why it should be treated differently from – or, at least, in confrontation with – the recent CJEU's case law concerning the mortgage loan agreements saga. Secondly, the paper 395 will argue that the denial of remuneration of the supplier—even though complying with the aim to restore the legal and factual situation in which the consumer would have been in the absence of the unfair term—could entail consumer over-protection issues, since the performance could not be returned; this situation could potentially lead to clashes with overarching general principles (such as the principle of proportionality). Lastly, the exclusion of a judicial revision in the sense of a judicial estimate could be detrimental for the consumer if the quantification of the supplier's remuneration would be impossible without such a judicial estimate. In that case, the invalidity of the unfair term and of the contract in its entirety could expose consumers to unjust enrichment claims, thus frustrating the CJEU's aim of preventing judicial estimates of a fair charge and undermining the principle of legal certainty, as interpreted by the European Court. In this sense, such an orientation will trigger a situation of consumer under-protection. In the final analysis, the paper will address some of the possible systemic implications of the CJEU's case examined. The paper will further suggest that, in order to prevent both situations of over-protection and under-protection of consumers, we should rethink the mechanisms of the transparency assessment under the UCTD – in particular, when essential terms are concerned and neither the restitution nor the remuneration of the services provided is possible or consistent with EU Consumer Law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the years, the UCTD has become one of the core EU directives aiming at the protection of both businesses and consumers (B2C), i.e., at the achievement of the appropriate balance between the parties' rights and obligations. However, the UCTD has also left quite a number of important legal questions unanswered. Besides the general clauses on the assessment of the unfairness of contractual terms, there remains a high degree of uncertainty as to the meaning of the transparency requirement and the legal consequences of unfair contractual terms. As a result, in spite of CJEU settled case law, as well as European Commission interpretation guidelines, there are diverging patterns in the national case law of the Member States. The aim of this paper is to investigate these diverging patterns by looking more closely into national case law and into the relationship between the CJEU and the Member States courts, taking as a case study the way in which the UCTD was applied in five countries (Austria, Croatia, France, Italy and Poland) in cases involving consumer loans indexed to the Swiss franc. The survey shows that there are noticeable differences in the interpretation of core concepts underlying the UCTD, such as the unfairness test, the exclusions from the unfairness assessment, and the transparency requirement. The most problematic areas, however, concern the legal consequences of the unfairness of contractual terms. By relying on the analysis of these and related issues, the authors have come to the conclusion that 347 even after 30 years of the existence of the UCTD, there are still many important legal questions that need solving. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Thirty years since it entered into force, the Unfair Contract Terms Directive ('UCTD') needs updating to address the challenges posed by digital services. This concerns in particular the fundamental research question of identifying new unfair terms of digital service providers ('DSPs') so that they can be included in a new blacklist. These challenges are central to the ongoing EC study named 'Fitness Check of EU Consumer Law' concerning the evolution of consumer law in the digital age, and promoting a fair and transparent environment for consumers in an ever-changing digital landscape. The article identifies digital-specific unfair terms used by DSPs and organises them into four main themes (i.e., digital services and contents, automation and personalisation, price & free services, and consumers' data rights). It also discusses the methodological approaches adopted by institutions and researchers in detecting such types of unfair terms in digital environments. Finally, the article examines the possible regulatory options and, particularly, the possibility of establishing a new blacklist of digital-specific unfair terms and/or developing EC guidelines for fairness assessment under the UCTD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital transformation is also transforming standard contract terms. With the emergence of online platforms, supported by algorithmic data analysis and self-enforcing technologies, platform terms are becoming increasingly common. The article argues that this type of terms differs from traditional standard terms in a number of ways, and it considers whether the existing unfair contract terms regime is still appropriate. The regulatory tools once developed for standard terms in bilateral agreements – transparency requirements, fairness review, and restrictions on contracting around – seem inadequate to meet the new challenges of digital transformation. In order to preserve – or rather recreate – the architecture of choice for private contracts, the paper argues for a new regulatory strategy: In order to strike the right balance between protecting private autonomy and avoiding significant imbalances, the regulatory objective should be to ensure the impartiality of platforms by focusing on the structural conditions of their rule-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the transparency requirement, regulated in Article 5 UCTD, is discussed. This provision requires traders to draft terms that are to be incorporated into contracts with consumers in plain and intelligible language. The paper discusses the function of the transparency requirement, the different elements, and the consequences of a breach of the requirement: should the contra proferentem rule be applied, is the term lacking transparency unfair, or could it be argued that such term never was incorporated into the contract to begin with? And does it actually matter? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Directive 1993/13/EEC on unfair contract terms (UCTD) is one of the oldest pieces of European consumer legislation, formulated before the development of the Internet as the leading marketplace, and still in force, with no major changes since its adoption. As the most significant piece of consumer legislation not substantially amended following the consumer law Fitness Check that resulted in the adoption of Directive 2019/2161/EU, it is questionable whether the UCTD remains fit for purpose in regulating the terms and conditions in the user agreements and policies of social media platforms to address the existence of the social platform related digital vulnerabilities of consumers. This paper assesses the potential and limits of data-based reforms to the UCTD, in procedural notification requirements and substantive unfair terms controls, before demonstrating how the UCTD could be brought up-to-date while preserving commercial certainty and avoiding dramatic changes. This could be done simply by mandating measures that are already being taken, either by social media platforms themselves or by other major tech companies, and by elaborating existing requirements with standards that are analogous to other already-existing consumer rights. The assessment of the real unfair-terms problems highlighted by regulatory actions around the world against two major traders, TikTok and Meta (including Facebook and WhatsApp), may illustrate well the inadequacies in the minimum protections currently afforded by the UCTD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Zeitschrift für Bankrecht und Bankwirtschaft is the property of De Gruyter and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Smart contracts, as a newly developed technology, may radically re‐shape traditional contractual relationships, transferring the power to perform and enforce from contractors to robots. This paper provides a framework which seeks to ensure that this transfer of power does not undermine vital consumer law values. The starting point is the well‐accepted idea of consumer law being based on values aiming to protect consumers as weaker parties in their relationships with traders and this will be built on using various new arguments. First it will be argued that any brave new world of smart contracts will still need the law to provide the sorts of rights it already does: smart contracts may enhance data preferences and improve choice up to a point, but they cannot produce market choices replacing the need for such legally mandated rights. Next it will be shown that to reflect underpinning protection values, some such rights must operate in particular ways. This includes rights concerning information and contract cancellation, conformity standards, remedies, and unfair terms: 'time sensitive' rights that must be available at certain stages of the relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transparency is a promising means for enhancing democratic values, countering corruption, and reducing power abuse. Nonetheless, the potential of transparency in the domain of consumer contracts is untapped. This Article suggests utilizing the power of transparency to increase consumer access to justice, better distribute technological gains between businesses and consumers, and deter sellers from breaching their consumer contracts while exploiting consumers' inferior position. In doing so, this Article focuses on what we dub "Hidden Contracts." Part I conceptualizes the idea of hidden contracts. It first defines hidden contracts as consumer form contracts that firms unilaterally modify and subsequently remove from the public sphere, despite being binding on consumers. Thereafter, the Article delineates the considerable social costs of hidden contracts. Given these social costs, Part II discusses our empirical study of hidden contracts. The results of this study indicate that leading firms that supply goods and services to billions of online consumers worldwide routinely employ hidden contracts to the detriment of consumers and society. Against this background, Part III proposes introducing a novel contract transparency duty. It further explains how to design this duty to counter firms' incentive to employ hidden contracts. Next, Part IV tackles key objections to our proposal. Concluding remarks follow. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is concerned with the risk management practices of an electricity retailer motivated by the Dutch electricity market. We examine the effectiveness of the existing base- and peak-load futures contracts as a risk management tool for the electricity retailers. We analytically characterize the retailer's optimal hedging policy as a function of the serial correlation of the prices and the demand profiles of its customers. We find that the retailer typically over-hedges in the futures market, and the over-hedging amount increases when both base- and peak-load contracts are used. Our findings indicate that although the existing contracts in the futures market are quite efficient to replicate the exposure from profiled customers, when industrial consumers and renewable generation are included to the retailer's portfolio, the effectiveness of such contracts decreases substantially. In our motivating example, hedging the risk of the profiled customers with base-load contracts, the firm may reduce the variance of its cash flows by 85.9%. In addition to the base-load contracts, including peak-load contracts into the hedging portfolio of the retailer increases the efficiency of hedging to 89.3%. However, when we consider the aggregate portfolio of the retailer including profiled customers, industrial consumers and renewable contracts, the efficiency of hedging through the existing futures contracts goes down as low as 32.8% during certain periods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista Foco (Interdisciplinary Studies Journal) is the property of Revista Foco and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Modern consumer contracts are the bane of contract law and theory. Freedom of contract justifications are premised on party autonomy and transactional efficiency, but theories justifying contract enforcement fail to explain why the law should treat company-crafted terms as presumptively binding on consumers. Consumer protection advocates point out that lower thresholds for manifesting assent endorsed by the recent Restatement of the Law of Consumer Contracts may result in consumers being bound to terms of which they were reasonably unaware. Other scholars point out that mere knowledge of company terms and conditions does almost nothing to protect consumers in any case because consumers are powerless to shape those terms. Indeed, in the face of negotiation impotency, it is inefficient and illogical for consumers to read, understand, and analyze a company's boilerplate terms even when they are made available. Attempting to fit traditional contract rules to the modern consumer contract context results in a body of contract law that combines fantastical notions of assent with increasing government policing of ostensibly private contract terms. Here is a better way. This Article advocates for a novel approach to consumer contract law, one that that avoids pitting fairness against efficiency. A more tailored contract baseline for consumer contracts starts by recognizing the distinct shape of the modern company-consumer relationship. Traditional contract law is premised on a "horizontal" relationship formed between parties who can each provide some contractual input. Consumers, however, lack the ability to provide direct contractual input for the majority of their transactional relationships. Online terms and conditions are created by and for companies; consumers simply acquiesce to them as a cost of doing business. Thus, the company-consumer relationship is a hierarchical, "vertical" relationship. Applying traditional horizontal contract law to vertical company-consumer relationships inhibits multi-party input and erodes contract legitimacy. In the context of a vertical relationship, the legal baseline must look outside the unilaterally controlled boilerplate to determine the parties' contract content. A better tailored approach to consumer contracts would treat a consumer's choice to do business with a company as legally distinct from assent to that company's online terms. Consumers choose transactional relationships, not online terms. Furthermore, the market provides inadequate variety among various companies' boilerplate terms. Contract law can provide a two-step pathway for consumers to shape the terms of their contracts. First, the law must disentangle the choice of making a transaction and a commitment to be bound to boilerplate terms. Then, although the law can deem consumer assent to terms necessary for the transaction's infrastructure (constructive terms), it must find boilerplate terms that exist solely to reduce consumers' default legal rights (destructive terms) legally ineffective. Tort law's liability allocation defaults, contract law's basic principles, and our legal system's dispute resolution process should persist notwithstanding mere boilerplate to the contrary. Consent to the transaction divorced from assent to destructive terms would prevent controlling parties in vertical relationships from dictating private governing rules. Existing default legal rights are a better approximation of consumer contracting preferences. This Article sets out theoretical justifications for altering the legal baseline for consumer contracts empowering consumer-preferred inputs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Romania's accession to the European Union has produced profound legal changes, including in legislative, doctrinal and practical terms. In matters of contract, the provisions of the European directives on the regulation of legal relations between professionals and consumers have created and continue to produce disputes, especially in the field of the harmonisation of the new consumerist institutions to the common national law. At the present stage, the general theory of the contract is subject to pressure exerted by the new rules, full of vitality, of the law of consumption or competition law. The main consumerist institutions subject to the national implementation process are: pre-contractual obligations, unfair terms and the consumer's right of withdrawal. The study insists on the difficulty of harmonizing the above institutions, in the context of the new legislative changes in the field, especially of the Emergency Ordinance of the Government. no. 58/2022. The work is structured in four sections: "The common law contract and the consumption contract", "Pre-contractual obligations: conditions of validity special to consumption", "Unfair terms: manifestations of pre-contractual will" and "Consumer withdrawal: denunciation of progressive consent". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Cuestiones Políticas is the property of Revista Cuestiones Politicas and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Regulators often impose rules that constrain the behavior of market participants. We study the design of regulatory policy in an insurance market as a delegation problem. A regulator restricts the menus of contracts an informed firm is permitted to offer, the firm offers a permitted menu to each consumer, and consumers choose contracts from offered menus. If consumer types and firm signals are ordered in a way that reflects coverage need, the regulator can leverage the firm's information by forcing the firm to offer specified additional options on each menu. Several extensions illustrate the practical application of our results. (JEL D21, D43, D82, D86, G22, G28, L51) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper summarizes results of a comparison of unfair clause legislation in the Central and Eastern European countries. In the introductory part, the development of the regulation of unfair terms, the sources of inspiration as well as the different approaches in traditional civil law countries are described. Subsequently, the regulations in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovenia, Serbia and Croatia are compared. The contemporary regulation is based on the minimum standards of the Council Directive 93/13/EEC of 5 April 1993 on Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts. Nevertheless, the scope of protection varies in its effects in particular states (e.g. scope of applicability, nature and number of prohibited clauses). The increasing importance of public authority in enforcement is evident. In the countries compared, protection against unfair terms is not limited only to consumer contracts, but it applies in different extent to some others as well.

We compare two polar approaches to domestic arbitration—the centralized U.S. policy on arbitration, which permits extensive use of arbitration, and Israel’s restrictive policy on arbitration, which is inspired by European policy yet takes an even more cautious approach. Focusing on consumer agreements, employment contracts, class action, and interim relief, we show that comparing the two approaches can help uncover a middle path to arbitration, which may hearken back to the requirement of consent, constructed anew. The article provides a theoretical basis for consent in arbitration as a moderating force that can ground this method of dispute resolution and conserve its benefits. Critics of arbitration have often proposed steps to liken it to adjudication (e.g., in terms of discovery and rules of evidence) to rein in potential imbalances. We suggest a different approach, which prevents its transformation into an institutionalized form of adjudication while reducing the potential for its abuse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Directive 93/13/ECC does not regulate prescription periods. However, some parameters can be drawn from the effectiveness principle that national legislation must consider in order to comply with Directive 93/13. This paper argues that the commencement of prescription for restitutionary claims following the unfairness of a term within the Directive 93/13 is determined with a reasonable discoverability criterion concerning the unfairness of the term. A consumer is able to discover the unfairness from the moment when a litigation context concerning the term in question arises. The commencement of prescription cannot be postponed until a court of last resort has decided over the issue on the unfairness. 182 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Campbell's theory of the morality of contract law clearly rejects this Marxist account because he sees the essence of contract law in mutual recognition, which is the basis of society. Campbell approves of the way that this freedom of contract and neo-classical economics is free from morality in the sense of moral standards that dictate which choices made when entering contracts are morally better than others. That is why many people think that the classical law of contract is as it is: the classical law of contract is derived from Pareto Optimality, as Campbell says it is, precisely because it is founded on solipsistic self-interest not mutual recognition as Campbell claims. Campbell insists, however, that the requirement of agreement in contract law is about the establishment of "relationships of mutual autonomy" (p. 27). [Extracted from the article]