Food is one of the fundamental elements of human life: it guarantees survival, it can dispense death and, above all, as Marcel Proust reminds us, it is deeply connected to our own ‘essence,’ having the power of blessing men with ‘exquisite pleasure’ and ‘all-powerful joy.’ Given the...

Risk regulation is of crucial importance for the functioning of contemporary societies, where risk is ubiquitous. Genetically modified organisms (GMOs), nanotechnologies, nuclear power and chemicals are examples of technologies and products that promise great benefits to society, and yet entail...

This article explores one dimension of the World Trade Organization (WTO) international legal framework relevant for food safety regimes. Rather than looking at individual norms, the article tries to understand what regulatory philosophies are compatible with this international legal regime....

This paper characterizes the choice between centralization and decentralization as a risk-return trade-off and examines it in a model that integrates ideas from committee-decisionmaking and portfolio theories. Centralization, by pooling expertise, rarely yields erroneous decisions; however, when...

The so-called Coase Theorem is one of the cornerstones of the Law and Economics approach. This paper investigates whether it is appropriate to apply the Coasean framework in the context of Environmental Law and Economics. Even when transaction costs are zero, it is argued that in the specific...

The picture of a Trojan horse, wrapped in banners reading STOP CETA, best portrays the fears underpinning the public opposition to the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement with Canada (CETA). The main suspicion is that the technical jargon of the economic transatlantic deal, hailed as...

International investment arbitration can be said to be built on a great asymmetry: on the one hand, foreign investors are endowed with a set of significant rights, most notably the right to initiate disputes before arbitration tribunals; on the other hand, States and citizens of the host State...

In 2019, the Dutch government presented a New Model Investment Agreement that seeks to contribute to the sustainability and inclusivity of future Dutch trade and investment policy. This article offers a critical analysis of the most relevant parts of the revised model text in order to appraise...