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AbstractPsychological observations are by now well integrated into economics, especially in the theory of finance, as can also be seen in the Nobel Prize awarded to Thaler. On the contrary, Simon's attempt to reforge economic theory on the paradigm of bounded rationality failed. Starting from the birth of the neoclassical paradigm, we'll describe the attempt to give it psychological foundations with a direct measurement of utility, then the axiomatic turn of the paradigm and its first anomalies. We'll then sum up the debate on rationality, taking place in the group of economists led by Simon, which brought to the rational expectations hypothesis. Finally, we'll discuss the development of behavioral economics and its progressive acceptance in economic theory. This historical reconstruction allows us to understand the actual hard core of the neoclassical paradigm and the growing need of the paradigm for practical flexibility that determines how to choose arguments, methods and evidence that can be useful to its development, including psychological ones.

The invasion of Ukraine will change the economic and political scenarios. Together with the sanctions, it will accelerate the 'de-globalization' process already triggered by the 2008 financial crisis and the pandemic. In this paper, we analyze the effects that economic sanctions will have, in particular, on the international monetary system. In recent years, the dominance of the dollar as the default international currency has weakened albeit slowly. However, in the new scenario, alternative systems to SWIFT (particularly the Chinese one) will receive a strong boost as will the use of payments in currencies other than the dollar. As has already happened in other historical periods, the change in the dominant international currency is linked to epochal events and to a change in the technological paradigm: the war and the development of a digital currency in China and then in other countries could form the basis of this turning point. ; L'invasione dell'Ucraina cambierà profondamente gli scenari economici e politici. Assieme alle sanzioni, accelererà il processo di 'de-globalizzazione' innescato dalla crisi finanziaria del 2008 e dalla pandemia. In questo lavoro analizziamo gli effetti che le sanzioni avranno su questi processi, in particolare sul sistema monetario internazionale. Negli ultimi anni il dominio del dollaro come valuta dei pagamenti internazionali è declinato ma lentamente, e i tentativi soprattutto della Cina e della Russia di emarginarlo non hanno avuto grande successo. Tuttavia, nel nuovo scenario i sistemi alternativi a SWIFT, particolarmente quello cinese, riceveranno un forte impulso così come l'utilizzo di pagamenti in valute diverse dal dollaro. Come già successo in altre epoche storiche, il cambiamento della valuta di riferimento degli scambi internazionali è legato a eventi epocali e a un cambio di paradigma tecnologico: la guerra e la valuta digitale cinese e poi di altri paesi potrebbero costituire le basi di questa svolta.

The 2008 crisis created a need to rethink many aspects of economic theory, including the role of public intervention in the economy. On this issue, we explore the Barro-Ricardo equivalence, which has played a decisive role in molding the economic policies that fostered the crisis. We analyze the equivalence and its theoretical underpinnings, concluding that: (1) it declares, but then forgets, that it does not matter whether the nature of debt and investment is public or private; (2) its most problematic assumption is the representative agent hypothesis, which does not allow for an explanation of financialization and cannot assess dangers coming from high levels of financial leverage; (3) social wealth cannot be based on any micro-foundation and is linked to the role of the state as provider of financial stability; and (4) default is always the optimal policy for the government, and this remains true even when relaxing many equivalence assumptions. We go on to discuss possible solutions to high levels of public debt in the real world, inferring that no general conclusions are possible and every solution or mix of solutions must be tailored to each specific case. We conclude by connecting different solutions to the political balance of forces in the current era of financialization, using Italy (and, by extension, the eurozone) as a concrete example to better illustrate the discussion.