The Legality of EU Sanctions under International Investment Agreements

in European Foreign Affairs Review (in press)

Rethinking the Regulation of Financial Influencers

in Goanta, Catalina (Ed.) Social Media Contracts – The Quest for Fairness and the Need for Reform (2023)

The growth of social media has led to an unprecedented rise in financial influencers, so- called finfluencers, who share investment ideas and opinions with a global audience. Finfluencers have various ... [more ▼]

The growth of social media has led to an unprecedented rise in financial influencers, so- called finfluencers, who share investment ideas and opinions with a global audience. Finfluencers have various business models, from endorsing products to advertising their mutual funds. Retail investors are particularly vulnerable to the risks posed by financial influencers because most lack financial literacy, according to a UK Financial Conduct Authority study from 2021. Additionally, the power dynamic inherent in the influencer- follower relationship can also increase consumers’ susceptibility, particularly through one- sided parasocial relationships. Parasocial relationships are one-sided relationships where one person extends emotional energy and interest towards the financial influencer, who may be completely unaware of the follower’s existence. Such relationships can lead to a higher level of trust, credibility, and reliance on the advice and recommendations of financial influencers, even if they are not qualified or licensed to provide financial advice. This can be particularly dangerous for retail investors with low levels of financial literacy, who may be more vulnerable to the risks posed by finfluencers. Thus, the current regulatory framework may not be adequate to protect consumers from the potential harms of financial influencers. This Article starts by briefly examining the current regulatory framework for financial influencers (based on Pflücke 2020 and 2022), including how the EU and five platforms govern it. It then proceeds by critically analysing and proposing targeted and actionable policy considerations to increase fairness and transparency on social media platforms. The Article argues that the current approach is neither evidence-based nor tailored to the activities and potential harms of financial influencers, requiring radical reforms to protect consumers and capital markets. [less ▲]

The effects of COVID-19-era unemployment and business closures upon the physical and mental health of older Europeans: Mediation through financial circumstances and social activity

in SSM - Population Health (2023)

COVID-19-era lockdown policies resulted in many older persons entering unemployment, facing financial difficulties and social restrictions, and experiencing declining health. Employing the Survey of ... [more ▼]

COVID-19-era lockdown policies resulted in many older persons entering unemployment, facing financial difficulties and social restrictions, and experiencing declining health. Employing the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe’s first COVID-19 module (summer 2020) (N=11,231) and the Karlson-Holm-Breen method for decomposition of effects within non-linear probability models (logistic regression modelling), we examined associations of pandemic-era lost work with older Europeans’ (50-80 years of age) self-assessed health, depressive symptoms, and anxiety symptoms, and mediation through households’ difficulties making ends meet, loneliness, and curtailed face-to-face contact with non-relatives. We find that lost work was associated with detriments in all three health outcomes. Total mediation was 23% for worsened self-assessed health, 42% for depressive symptoms, and 23% for anxiety symptoms. In all cases, combined mediation through the two social activity variables was approximately twice the magnitude of mediation through household financial difficulties. This evidence highlights the extent of employment’s value for friendship formation and sustenance, and social activity, during the pandemic-era social restrictions. This might be accentuated among older persons because of the social constrictions often concomitant to advancing age. These results emphasize that the social correlates of lost employment, beyond the financial concomitants, should receive thorough research and policy attention, perhaps especially for older adults during public health crises. [less ▲]

Temporary Self-Deprivation Can Impair Cognitive Control: Evidence From the Ramadan Fast

in Personality and social psychology bulletin (2022), 49(3), 415--428

During Ramadan, people of Muslim faith fast by not eating or drinking between sunrise and sunset. This is likely to have physiological and psychological consequences for fasters, and societal and economic ... [more ▼]

During Ramadan, people of Muslim faith fast by not eating or drinking between sunrise and sunset. This is likely to have physiological and psychological consequences for fasters, and societal and economic impacts on the wider population. We investigate whether, during this voluntary and temporally limited fast, reminders of food can impair the fasters' reaction time and accuracy on a non-food-related test of cognitive control. Using a repeated measures design in a sample of Ramadan fasters (N = 190), we find that when food is made salient, fasters are slower and less accurate during Ramadan compared with after Ramadan. Control participants perform similarly across time. Furthermore, during Ramadan performances vary by how recently people had their last meal. Potential mechanisms are suggested, grounded in research on resource scarcity, commitment, and thought suppression, as well as the psychology of rituals and self-regulation, and implications for people who fast for religious or health reasons are discussed. [less ▲]

A Multi-Objective Optimization Algorithm to Generate Unbiased Stimuli Sequences for Cognitive Tasks

Poster (2019)

Cognitive scientists want to ensure that particular cognitive tasks target particular cognitive functions that can be mapped to stable neural markers. Numerous cognitive tasks, like the n-back, involve ... [more ▼]

Cognitive scientists want to ensure that particular cognitive tasks target particular cognitive functions that can be mapped to stable neural markers. Numerous cognitive tasks, like the n-back, involve generating sequence of trials which satisfy certain statistical properties.The common approach to generate these sequences however lacks a theoretical framework and induces unintentional structure in the sequences which affects both behavioral performance and might bias the people’s cognitive strategies when completing a task. For example, people might exploit local properties in a random sequence in their decision making process. We argue that optimized experimental design requires cognitive tasks to be served by stimulus sequence generators that satisfy multiple constraints, both at the global and at the local structures of the sequence and that these sequence properties need to be systematically incorporated in the behavioral data analysis pipeline. We then develop a framework to reformulate the sequence generation process as a compositional soft constraint satisfaction problem and offer a multi-objective, genetic-algorithm-based method to generate controlled sequences under behavioral and neural constraints. This approach provides a systematic and coherent framework to handle stimulus sequences which in turn will impact the insights that can be gained from the behavioral and neural data collected on people performing cognitive tasks using those sequences. [less ▲]