7 THE ITALIAN LAW JOURNAL NO. 2 (2021)
The Bounded-Rationality Model in Italian Over-Indebtedness Regulation
by Federica Nanci In recent decades, the basic rational-actor model – which also influenced law – has been questioned by cognitive psychology studies, whose results are now finding support from technologies dedicated to neuroscience. Cognitive psychologists propose a different decision-making paradigm, asserting that economic choices are often conditioned by biases and heuristics, on the assumption that the ‘real man’ is boundedly rational. This model has been grafted into studies on the economic analysis of law, giving birth to behavioural law and economics. DOI 10.23815/2421-2156.ITALJ ISSN 2421-2156
In Italian law, where an over-indebtedness regulatory system has only recently been introduced, few scholars have yet adopted this approach to observe the phenomenon. This work thus focuses on Italian legislation, questioning the desirability, outcomes, and limits of an approach to over-indebtedness inspired by the theory of bounded rationality.
