Razionalità limitata e regole contrattuali: promesse e problemi della nuova analisi economica del diritto

Today Behavioral Law and Economics is the most ambitious attempt to overcome one of the main limits of Law and Economics, that is the recourse to a model of rationality which is little supported by empirical evidence. However, such an attempt relies exclusively on the idea of "cognitive bias" developed by cognitive psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. From a normative point of view, the implications of that approach are debatable. The paper proposes to look at psychological schools which show stronger links with the original notion of bounded rationality introduced by Herbert Simon. Among these schools, evolutionary psychology rejects the comparison between observed behavior and the axioms of perfect rationality and tries to find out the factors that ease, obstruct or interact with the decision-making process. The differences between the perspective of Behavioral Law and Economics and other psychological approaches are explored in the field of contract law. Moreover, additional considerations are developed on the comparison between the bounded rationality of public and private organizations and its consequences for the allocation of decision-making authority.

Diritto europeo dei contratti e regolazione delle public utilities

The article focuses on two parallel developments, the Europeanization of contract law and the regulation of communications markets. Comparing the two sectors allows to test some hypotheses about the interaction between administrative tools e private law rules. Specific attention is paid to the changes that in the near future will be needed to build an optimal mix of regulatory instruments.

Renewables, Investments, and State Aids: Exploring the Legal Side of Polycentricity

The requirement to adopt minimum labour standards is now standard practice in free trade agreements negotiated by major trading powers such as the EU and US. However, such practice has historically been contested by developing countries, who contend that the requirement to increase labour and social protection standards is designed to remove one of the few competitive advantages that developing countries have over developed countries in attracting foreign investment. More recently, the EU and the US have also sought to use so-called ‘mega-regionals’ to promote labour standards. This was a significant development in that their proponents were keen to stress that these agreements would set the benchmark for labour protection provisions in FTAs, readily admitting that one of the central aims pursued by such agreements was to redefine the rules of the global trading system. The paper aims to assess the labour standards provisions included in EU and US FTAs, determine the rationale behind the inclusion of such provisions, and examine the extent to which mega-regionals such as the TTIP and the TPP marked a significant departure from past practice

Custos morais e direito comparado

Para Guido Calabresi, os custos morais surgem quando a comunidade rejeita estruturas autoritárias ou de mercado que estabelecem preços para bens meritórios, ou recusa que o acesso a esses bens dependa da riqueza individual. Reconhecer que aos custos morais deve ser atribuída a mesma importância dos custos de transação significa enfrentar duas dificuldades metodológicas: primeira, a identificação dos contextos em que os custos morais são relevantes; segunda, a seleção das estruturas autoritárias ou de mercado capazes de geri-los. Neste artigo, propõe-se uma perspectiva comparativa para enfrentar ambas as dificuldades. Mais especificamente, é proposta  uma análise em três estágios para identificar os contextos nos quais os custos morais são relevantes: a seleção de áreas nas quais é plausível esperar que os custos morais e os custos de transação se movam em direções opostas (primeira fase); a avaliação das estruturas institucionais que em cada sistema jurídico contribuem para reduzir ou aumentar as desigualdades (segunda fase); e o uso de dados empíricos sobre a difusão de certos princípios morais em diferentes países para confirmar a relevância dos custos morais em contextos específicos (terceira fase). Com referência à gestão dos custos morais, são listados alguns fatores que devem ser levados em consideração para a seleção de estruturas autoritárias ou de mercado. Além disso, sugere-se que a análise comparativa deve servir para avaliar quais dessas estruturas são compatíveis com cada contexto institucional

Territorial Development as an Innovation Driver: A Complex Network Approach

Rankings are a well-established tool to evaluate the performance of actors in different sectors of the economy, and their use is increasing even in the context of the startup ecosystem, both on a regional and on a global scale. Although rankings meet the demand for measurability and comparability, they often provide an oversimplified picture of the status quo, which, in particular, overlooks the variability of the socio-economic conditions in which the quantified results are achieved. In this paper, we describe an approach based on constructing a network of world countries, in which links are determined by mutual similarity in terms of development indicators. Through the instrument of community detection, we perform an unsupervised partition of the considered set of countries, aimed at interpreting their performance in the StartupBlink rankings. We consider both the global ranking and the specific ones (quality, quantity, business). After verifying if community membership is predictive of the success of a country in the considered ranking, we rate country performances in terms of the expectation based on community peers. We are thus able to identify cases in which performance is better than expected, providing a benchmark for countries in similar conditions, and cases in which performance is below the expectation, highlighting the need to strengthen the innovation ecosystem

Veterinary students' proximity to and interpretation of a simulated "aggressive" dog before and after training.

Dog "aggression" in the veterinary practice is commonplace. Therefore, student knowledge and education about dog behaviour and the ability to interpret "aggressive" behaviour is important from a human injury prevention and dog welfare perspective. The study aimed to compare first-year veterinary students' perceived safest proximity to both an "aggressive" and non-reactive simulated dog, both before and after a teaching intervention about canine behaviour and a handling practical. It also examined student confidence and their ability to identify "aggressive" behaviours. Forty first year veterinary students took part in two surveys. Each survey included two videos: one of a simulated dog displaying "aggressive" behaviour, based on the 'Canine Ladder of Aggression'; and another displaying non-reactive (passive behaviours without reaction to the participants) behaviours. Each video depicted the slow and consistent approach towards the virtual dog within a virtual indoor environment, and participants were asked to press stop if or when they would stop approaching the dog. In the "aggressive" scenario, there was a reduction in the approach-stop time from survey 1 (median = 17.8 s) to survey 2 (median = 15.2 s) in the intervention group (p = 0.018) but not in the control group (p = 0.147). Regarding confidence, there was a significant increase in the self-reported confidence rating relating to a participant's ability to interpret canine behaviour in both the control (p = 0.011) and intervention (p = 0.003). In conclusion, these results indicate that students using approach-stop videos stayed further away from an "aggressive" virtual dog model if they had undertaken a canine behaviour educational intervention. This novel approach has the potential for further use in teaching and assessment of student knowledge and behaviour which may otherwise be difficult to demonstrate

Why Amphibians Are More Sensitive than Mammals to Xenobiotics

Dramatic declines in amphibian populations have been described all over the world since the 1980s. The evidence that the sensitivity to environmental threats is greater in amphibians than in mammals has been generally linked to the observation that amphibians are characterized by a rather permeable skin. Nevertheless, a numerical comparison of data of percutaneous (through the skin) passage between amphibians and mammals is lacking. Therefore, in this investigation we have measured the percutaneous passage of two test molecules (mannitol and antipyrine) and three heavily used herbicides (atrazine, paraquat and glyphosate) in the skin of the frog Rana esculenta (amphibians) and of the pig ear (mammals), by using the same experimental protocol and a simple apparatus which minimizes the edge effect, occurring when the tissue is clamped in the usually used experimental device