Varieties of consumer credit data regimes: A regulatory governance approach

Abstract

Credit markets are expanding, and with them also the automated, large-scale commercialization of personal credit data. The increasing use of data and scores for commodified decision making lends greater urgency to the study of credit data regulatory regimes. This article promotes a comparative regulatory governance perspective as the basis for theory-driven, multidimensional measurement. In order to measure consumer protection, we distinguish three different subregimes (collection, profiling, and use) and construct a two-dimensional index of consumer protection (market restriction and user empowerment). We then assess the index and demonstrate its applicability and validity, building on empirical analysis of the regulatory regimes in the United States, France, Sweden, and Israel for the year 2019. Our approach points to a new direction in researching and measuring regulatory regimes in a comparative manner, which looks beyond national analysis toward an in-depth understanding of other, equally important, levels of variation.

Modes of regulatory governance: A political economy perspective

“…Methodologically speaking, two articles use a quantitative (Kudrna, ; Wassum & De Francesco, ) and four espouse a mostly qualitative approach (Mizrachy‐Borchovitz & Levi‐Faur, ; Bulfone, ; Coroado, ; Rothstein, Paul, & Demeritt, ). All contributions employ the comparative method.…”

“…All contributions employ the comparative method. More specifically, Bulfone () and Wassum and De Francesco () compare across different countries and sectors; Mizrachy‐Borchovitz and Levi‐Faur (), Kudrna () and Rothstein, Paul and Demeritt () analyze the same regulatory sector in different countries; Coroado () performs a diachronic analysis of several sector regulators in the same country. In terms of geographical variation, European countries are predominant in our sample: only Mizrachy‐Borchovitz and Levi‐Faur () go beyond by including the United States and Israel.…”

“…Considering sectors, the special issue covers not only domains that have been traditionally analyzed in regulatory studies, such as network industries (see Bulfone, ; Wassum & De Francesco, ), but also fields that have received less attention, for example, occupational health and safety (Rothstein, Paul, & Demeritt, ), and regulatory sectors characterized by recent developments like banking regulation (Kudrna, ) and credit consumer data protection (Mizrachy‐Borchovitz & Levi‐Faur, ).…”

“…Most articles seek to explain how institutions and actors (inputs) influence outputs, which we have distinguished between rules that allow or forbid specific behaviors (prescriptive outputs) and rules that create enforcers like regulatory agencies and endow them with powers and competences (organizational outputs). Four articles (Mizrachy‐Borchovitz & Levi‐Faur, ; Bulfone, ; Kudrna, ; Rothstein, Paul, & Demeritt, ) look at prescriptive outputs, while two (Coroado, ; Wassum & Di Francesco, ) focus on organizational outputs, and on the independence and autonomy of regulatory agencies in particular. The relationship between outputs and outcomes, which we found to be rare in regulatory studies in general, is explored by the two contributions (Bulfone, ; Rothstein, Paul, & Demeritt, ) that adopt a more historical‐institutionalist approach.…”

“…A number of studies have as main objective categorization, while others more focused on tracing causal mechanisms. Among the former, we can include the articles by Mizrachy‐Borchovitz and Levi‐Faur () and Kudrna (), which both trace recent regulatory innovations. The main aim of the article by Mizrachy‐Borchovitz and Levi‐Faur (), for instance, is chiefly exploratory: that is, it assesses whether different regulatory regimes in consumer data protection exist in the first place.…”