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We use EVS-WVS data to test our hypothesis about the contextual dependence of cohesion in Europe. In particular, we apply Bayesian Networks to describe the emergence of Social Cohesion in different welfare models. The creation of different networks for each Welfare model aims at demonstrating that a different way to manage Social Policies creates different paths of Social Cohesion. Political participations, civil engagement and positive social ties are fundamental dimensions, producing Social Capital, while social cohesion requires further dimensions too, as the presence of structural dynamics (equity, granted public services) and the increase in satisfaction. The mechanisms detected are similar enough from different areas, with interesting specificities for Mediterranean, Social-Democratic and Post-communist models.

Security is strictly linked to the possibility of adopting exceptional measures within the framework of decision-making processes transcending normal political processes. However, an exploration of the evolution of the security concept challenges the premises of its exceptionality, and brings attention to its contextual elements. The Copenhagen school has greatly contributed to this exploration and it has focused on securitization, that is the process through which security threats are identified and exceptional measures in response are legitimized. After having highlighted the evolution of the security concept, the article presents the securitization proposal of the Copenhagen school and points out its limits and potentialities. ; Security is strictly linked to the possibility of adopting exceptional measures within the framework of decision-making processes transcending normal political processes. However, an exploration of the evolution of the security concept challenges the premises of its exceptionality, and brings attention to its contextual elements. The Copenhagen school has greatly contributed to this exploration and it has focused on securitization, that is the process through which security threats are identified and exceptional measures in response are legitimized. After having highlighted the evolution of the security concept, the article presents the securitization proposal of the Copenhagen school and points out its limits and potentialities.

The paper takes into account a feature of Hans Kelsen's juridical thinking that has been so far rather underestimated: the weight of normativism on his theory of private law. The author closely connects Kelsen's critical approach to the notion of subjective right and further relates the legal norms to the institutions of the market economy. The interepretative assumptions of Kelsen are constantly confronted with the theoretical background that propelled the development of the modern constitutional state based on the rule of law.

The empirical analysis of the effects of government policies on the incentives of economic agents is the leitmotif of the present thesis, with two distinct fields of application. While the first essay mostly contributes to the empirical banking literature, with a focus on the link between implicit guarantees for bank debt and political connections in Europe, the second one contributes to the field of education economics and is devoted to an analysis of the effects of bibliometric-based hiring and promotion schemes in Italian public universities on scholars' productivity. The two essays also share some methodological affinities. First, the two projects exploit two different identification strategies that have the common ambition of isolating and estimating a causal effect of public policies on the outcomes of interest. Second, the two works are characterized by the use of two original datasets, that have been obtained merging multiple sources of data, some of them pre-existing and others that have been hand-collected. Finally, the two essays share the novelty of the research questions they aim to answer, which are relatively unexplored by the existing literature.