Fabrizio Esposito

Associate Professor

Fabrizio.Esposito@novalaw.unl.pt

Biographical Note | Pedagogical Experience | Main Publications | Research Areas

Fabrizio Esposito is Assistant Professor in Private Law at the NOVA School of Law, where he coordinates with Prof. Athina Sachoulidou the Master in Law – Specialization in Business Law and Technology and the Data-Driven Law Knowledge Centre with Prof. Margarida Lima Rego. He is also Librarian Professor, and a member of the NOVA Consumer Lab. Outside NOVA, Fabrizio coordinates the MetaLawEcon network and is an analyst for EU Law Live.


Research

His research focuses on the relationship between private law, economic law, EU law, economics and legal theory. He is particular interested in the intersect between consumer law, data protection, competition law, and sector specific legislation in addressing the challenges raised by technological developments in the attention economy. He is currently working on price personalization, and the use of theories of harm in consumer law with a special attention to consumer data collecion. Fabrizio is about to publish a monograph showing how to change the mainstream research paradigm at the intersect between law and economics by taking the consumer interest as core value in market regulation.


Supervision

Fabrizio encourages students interested in any of the above, and in particular interested in the legal structure of the attention economy to reach out and explore potential collaboration opportunities, starting with thesis supervision. Ambitious students who intend to produce publishable work in a peer-review journal and are considering interdisciplinary research and/or to pursue an academic career are particularly encouraged to reach out.


Education

Fabrizio graduated in law at Bocconi University in 2011. After working for two years in civil and commercial litigation, he was admitted as a researcher at the European University Institute, where he obtained an LLM in Comparative, European and International Law (2015) and his PhD in 2018 after defending his dissertation, which opens new frontiers in research about law and economics.


Previous positions

Before joining the NOVA School of Law, Fabrizio was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Tel Aviv University and Postdoctoral Fellow at the Universitè Catholique de Louvain, where he joined the PROSECO Project. He held visiting positions at the University of Helsinki and Pisa, and was a Global Visiting Fellow at UCLouvain.


Publications

Fabrizio publishes regularly in international journals such as: Computer Law & Security Review, the European Review of Contract Law, the Journal of Consumer Policy, the European Journal of Risk Regulation, the European Competition Journal. He has co-edited two volumes: Research Methods in Consumer Law (with H-W Micklitz and A-L Sibony; EE 2018) and Economics in Legal Reasoning (with P Cserne; Palgrave 2020). He was in charge of the legal theory section of the European Journal of Legal Studies, writes twice per year for the European Review of Contract Law about recent developments in EU contract law

Bachelor’s degree (1st cycle) 

  • Behavioural Sciences in Law and in Politics 
  • Civil and Commercial Contracts
  • Legal Drafting
  • Law and Economics
  • Theory of the Norm (in Portuguese)

Master’s degree (2nd cycle)

  • Pragmatism, Law and Economics
  • Law and Economics Perspectives on The Role of Consumers In EU Law 
  • Economic Law
  • Law and Technology
  • Methodology of Legal Research

Doctoral school (3rd cycle)

  • Justice and Efficiency 
  • Methodologies of Legal Analysis

Monograph

  • “Law and Economics United in Diversity: Minimalism, Fairness, and Consumer Welfare in EU Antitrust and Consumer Law”. 2018. Florence: European University Institute. Available here: https://cadmus.eui.eu/handle/1814/58544

Edited volumes

  • “Economics in Legal Reasoning”. 2020. Palgrave (with P Cserne)
  • “Research Methods in Consumer Law”. 2018. Edward Elgar (with H-W Micklitz and A-L Sibony)

Main Journal articles

  • “When Indicators Fail Electricity Policies: the Pitfalls of the EU’s Retail Energy Market Barrier Index”. Forthcoming in Energy Policy (with Lucila de Almeida and Josehpine van der Zeben)
  • “The Consumer Benchmark, Vulnerability, and the Contract Terms Transparency. A Plea for Reconsideration”. Forthcoming in European Review of Contract Law (with Mateusz Grochowski)
  • “Será que o Direito Português confere melhor proteção aos consumidores vulneráveis que o Direito da União Europeia no contexto de cláusulas abusivas em contratos de consumo? Uma análise jurídica e económica”. Forthcoming in Catolica Law Review (with Leonor Gamboa Machado and Mateusz Grochowski)
  • “The GDPR Enshrines the Right to the Impersonal Price”. 2022. Compute Law & Security Review, 45
  • “Towards a General Theory of Harm for Consumer Law”. 2021. Journal of Consumer Policy, 44
  • “Dziubak Is a Fundamentally Wrong Decision: Superficial Reasoning, Disrespectful of National Courts, Lowers the Level of Consumer Protection”. 2020. European Review of Contract Law, 16(4)
  • “Carrying the Choice Theory of Contracts Further: Transfers, Welfare, and the Size of the Community”. 2019. European Review of Contract Law, 15(3)
  • “On the Fitness Between Law and Economics—Or Sunstein Between Posner and Calabresi”. 2019. Global Jurist, 19(3)
  • “How The Behavioural Turn In Law And Economics Vindicates The New Haven School”. 2017. Oeconomia 7(3)
  • “Alcune Note sui Disaccordi Teorico-Interdisciplinari del Diritto con l’Economia” (Some Remarks on the Interdisciplinary Theoretical Disagreements of Law With Economics). 2017. Rivista Internazionale di Filosofia del Diritto94(1). English and Spanish translations forthcoming in Latin America Legal Studies
  • “A Dismal Reality: Behavioural Analysis and Consumer Policy”. 2017. Journal of Consumer Policy40(2)
  • “Nudge and the Law: Book Review”. 2015. Mente28. Reprinted in European Journal of Risk Regulation 2/2015
  • “A Fistful of Euros: EU Competition Policy and Reverse Payments in the Pharmaceutical Industry”. 2014. European Competition Journal10(3) (with F Montanaro, Bocconi) 

Main Chapters

  • “In Search of the Theory of Harm in EU Consumer Law: Lessons from the Consumer Fitness Check”. Forthcoming. In Mathis and Tor (eds.), Consumer Law and Economics in Europe. Dordrecht: Springer (with A-L Sibony, UCLouvain)
  • “Reverse Engineering Legal Reasoning”. 2020. In Cserne and Esposito (eds.), Economics in Legal Reasoning. Palgrave
  • “Economic Consequences as Legal Values: An Inferentialist Approach”. 2019. In Cserne and Malecka (eds.), Law and Economics as Interdisciplinary Exchange. Routledge (with G Tuzet, Bocconi)
  • “In Search of a Grand Theory of European Private Law: Social Justice, Access Justice, Societal Justice and Energy Markets”. 2019. In Purnhagen, Almeida, Gamito, Durovik, (eds.), Transformation of Economic Law: In Honour of Hans-W Micklitz. Hart (with L de Almeida, Wageningen University & Research)
  • “Conceptual Foundations of the Behavioural Analysis of Consumer Law in Europe”. 2018. In Micklitz, Sibony, Esposito (eds.), Research Methods in Consumer Law. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. Portuguese translation published as “Fundamentos Conceptuais na Doutrina do Direito do Consumo e das Ciencias Comportamentais”. 2020. Anuario do NOVA Consumer Lab
  • Law and economics
  • EU law
  • Consumer law
  • Economic law
  • Competition law
  • Data protection
  • Price personalisation
  • Attention economy
  • Legal reasoning

Students Assistance Service:
Monday from 12p.m. to 2p.m.
Friday from 8a.m. to 10a.m.
(Registrations by email)

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