Download Whither bespoke procedure?

COMMENTS ON
NOTHING TO DECLARE
David Hoffman
Some things to declare
• This is a remarkable research agenda which I’ve
previously blogged about.
• I make a trivial amount of money from my blogging
• I will be using this research in my own future work
• If I could figure out a way to monetize my research, I would
Highlighted findings
• When COI is immutable, disclosure of COI is perverse for
both advisors and advisees.
• When COI is mutable, disclosure is curative for advisees
• Under some circumstances, voluntary disclosure is as
curative as mandatory disclosures
• Thus, when COIs are avoidable, disclosure isn’t
perverse
Some minor quibbles
• Are there gender effects? Other demographic effects?
• How was an 83% response rate to internet solicitation
achieved?
• These experiments have become somewhat well-known:
any chance of contamination in the pool?
Digging into immutable COIs
• Paper puts subjects in the position of being able to avoid/not-
avoid a COI. Subjects who selected out of COI were never in
the position of conflict.
• In life, COIs typically creep up on us – most of the time, we
are conflicted at the decision-point. We can renounce the gains
(indeed, law might compel it) but it’s harder to avoid the COI in
the first instance.
• And what does it mean, in reality, to have an unavoidable
conflict? Almost all conflicts can be avoided given sufficient
effort and expense.
• Why not test the relationship between difficulty of exit and
advice giving?
• Put subjects in conflict position as a default and see what they do
• Have them do two rounds of the experiment to see how they learn
from the feeling of being in conflict
(Perceived) Sophistication of Advisees
• Paper finds that where voluntary disclosure will be noticed
by advisees, there are few DV differences between
mandatory and voluntary disclosures
• Legal regimes might then possibly differ based on the
sophistication of the audience.
• But it’s only the perceived sophistication of the audience
that matters.
• Are there ways we can trick advisors into thinking
advisees are more sophisticated than they are?
Moral Licensing & the Law
• Legal disclosure obligations typically fall on fiduciaries.
Paper suggests – briefly – that fiduciary relationship could
mediate the effect of both beneficent and perverse
disclosure.
• Next paper? Make advisors feel like fiduciaries
• code of conduct
• a story about good behavior
• professional subjects
• Contrasting intuitions: fiduciary conflicts are morally
nondischargeable, but law permits disclosure to cure
them
• Would knowledge of fiduciary law (“abstain or disclose”)
reinvigorate perverse effect?
Agency and Disclosure
What if the advisor’s COI benefits a third party?
• Employees of a conflicted firm or working for a client or assigned
benefits to unknown third party
• Hypothesis: less likely to see an effect based on
selecting into COI regime, since moral licensing effect is
likely to disappear.
• Mediated by how closely related the third-party is to the advisor
Contracts and Disclosure
What if the advisee’s relationship to the advisor is
proximate?
• Internal to contract relationship, parties often ask for new
terms and must disclose COI. (Think Facebook.)
Research Question: Is disclosure internal to contract
relationship treated the same as disclosure during
bargaining?
Research Question: Would it matter if you are assigned to
a contract which put you in a position of conflict?