Reviewing in Legal Attitude to Standard Terms of Consumer Contracts from the "Law and Behavioral Economics" perspective; Emphasizing EU Directions and Iranian law

Document Type : Scientific research

Authors

• Jalil Ghanavati ¹
• yadollah dadgar ²
• Mohammadali Rezapoor Akerdi ³

¹ Associate Professor at Faculty of Law, University of Tehran,

² Professor, Faculty of Economics, University of Shahid Beheshti

³ PhD Candidate in Private Law at University of Tehran, Farabi campus

https://doi.org/10.22067/economlaw.2023.76138.1167

Abstract

Nowadays, consumer contracts, which contain a wide range of contracts, are made in the standard form predominantly. Despite their economic benefit, these contracts have bad result for the consumer, In such a way that the trader, with exploitation of his superior position, arrange an unfair contract to his advantage and to the detriment of the consumer.The law can not be passive against this injustice but legal mechanisms to deal with unfair and one-sided terms of consumer contracts are inefficient, because that provisions, according to the neoclassic economics, believe that informational Asymmetry and Inequality are the main cause of unfair consumer contracts, And so, uses information disclosure strategies as the basic tool to solve the problem of unfair terms of consumer contracts, this approach need to be reviewed and changed. This new approach is taking the advantage of the findings of "behavioral law and economics". Accordingly, the main problem of consumer contracts lies not only in the information asymmetry between the consumer and the trader, but also in the consumer’s real perception and decision-making processes that are affected by cognitive biases and errors.

in this article, we will show in a descriptive-analytical way that the EU law approach, which includes the most detailed and advanced regulations in this field, as well as the consumer protection regulations in Iranian law, are based on the information paradigm, derived from neoclassical economics insights and failed in fair and equitable consumer contracts conclusion.

Keywords

• behavioral law and economics
• neoclassic economics
• economic analysis of law
• standard terms

References

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