CONSUMER protection regulation has come under increasing fire from Congress, the courts, and the business community. Regulations have been criticized as costly, economically irrational, rigid, and paternalistic. 1 One response to these charges has been a movement away from traditional forms of regulation and toward interventions that are more compatible with consumer and seller incentives. In particular, there has been increased interest in techniques which ensure that consumers have sufficient information to protect themselves against unsafe products or unfair seller behavior. Despite the general acceptance of this goal, analysis of how to efficiently provide consumer information has lagged behind. Information has traditionally been viewed as something which consumers either had or had not; and if they did not have it, the only solution was (somehow) to give it to them. Similarly, deception of consumers has been viewed as undesirable simply as a matter of definition, with the proper response to such deception being (obviously) to eliminate it. While these simple prescriptions may be accurate as far as they go, they mask many of the complexities involved in the ways in which information is communicated to consumers and the ways that consumers (and the market) respond. This paper explores some of those complexities in an attempt to see how the legal system's efforts to improve consumer infor-