The following are key points from John E. Calfee's Fear of Persuasion:

The New Economics of Advertising and Competition
Advertising restrictions have historically been based on fear of persuasion. But three decades of research have transformed scholarly thinking. Once seen as a fountain of misinformation and a tool for shaping the desires of compliant consumers, advertising is now understood to be a tool for consumers to use for their own purposes, something to be welcomed rather than feared.

Advertising's Unintended Benefits
Advertising is part of the "invisible hand" that causes manufacturers to promote the general welfare even as they seek only to further their own interests. Markets as diverse as pharmaceuticals, foods, and cigarettes have demonstrated immense benefits to consumers from purely self-interested advertising. Even young children and their parents benefit by getting better products at lower prices.

Advertising as a Self-correcting Force
Competitive dynamics in advertising generate markets in which information is richer and more fundamentally balanced than can be achieved through detailed controls over advertising and information. Brutally competitive advertising has provided consumers with negative as well as positive information about products as diverse as life insurance, fatty foods, airlines, health care organizations, medicines-and politicians. Even the much-maligned advertising of cigarettes-before being reined in by misguided regulation-was far ahead of government authorities in reminding consumers of the health dangers of smoking.

Advertising Bans Are Inherently Anti-Consumer
Prohibitions on advertising have been relentlessly anti-consumer, bringing higher prices, fewer new products, less consumer information, and worse choices. Ad bans buttress entrenched sellers without reducing targeted activities like smoking and drinking. Enlightened self-regulation is a promising but neglected substitute for much of the regulation now in force.

Advertising and Freedom
Consumers have an enormous stake in the freedom to advertise. Competitive advertising is stacked in favor of the consumer's interest, and the regulatory system is stacked against it. An unmistakable and unassailable protection for reasonably construed, truthful advertising is now a minimum condition for more efficient and more beneficial consumer markets.