e-journal

THE MEANING OF CONTRACTUAL SILENCE: A FIELD EXPERIMENT

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ABSTRACT
The limited capacity of lawmakers to intuit the unstated wishes of contracting
parties constitutes a daunting obstacle to the formulation of majoritarian default
rules. This paper presents a field experiment that prices consumers’ unstated
understandings of contractual silence regarding warranty and return policies for
a good. Used iPods were sold via auction on eBay.com with randomly varying
return policies. Some iPods came with a satisfaction guaranteed policy, others
with an explicit warranty that resembled the default warranty of merchantability,
and still other iPods were sold ‘‘as is.’’ Finally, a batch of iPods was silent regarding
the return policy. Although the estimates are extremely imprecise, consumers
appear to pay approximately the same price for iPods with silence regarding
the return policy as they do for iPods with the explicit warranty that resembles
the UCC default warranty. Silent iPods sell for less than iPods that are satisfaction
guaranteed, and considerably more than iPods sold ‘‘as is’’—though again a lack of
precision precludes confident inferences. Consumers interpret silence in accord
with silence’s legal meaning; the UCC framer’s ‘‘guess’’ about majoritarian warranty
expectations is an empirically reasonable one.

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Informasi Detail

Judul Seri

Journal of Legal Analysis

No. Panggil

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Penerbit

Oxford : Oxford University Press on behalf of The John M. Olin Center for Law., 2010

Deskripsi Fisik

Fall 2010: Volume 2, Number 2 ~ Journal of Legal Analysis

Bahasa

English

ISBN/ISSN

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Klasifikasi

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Tipe Isi

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Tipe Media

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Tipe Pembawa

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Edisi

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Subjek

HUKUM

Info Detail Spesifik

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Pernyataan Tanggungjawab

agus

Versi lain/terkait

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