The European Union (EU) remains one of the leading-edge jurisdictions on the planet in legislating and enforcing the circular economy, a token of its forthright environmental awareness. Still, given that the level of economic development across the EU member states is heterogenous, this concern, however generous it may be, looks too beyond “their” means and too ahead of “its” times. What the European policymakers seem to disregard is that top-down institutional constructions, as is the case with the EU’s overambitious environmental legislation, can end up in severe distortions. Imposing/importing an institutionalized arrangement without due preparation may fuel resistance to (even positive) change, as the biases it engenders translate into considerable costs and selective benefits. The present article attempts a novel approach within the literature, where the failure to achieve recycling targets is usually considered the fault of private businesses. Instead, our study explains suboptimal environmental results by the institutionalization of spiraling governmental interventions in markets, meant to make the arbitrarily set recycling/reuse targets artificially viable. Subject to EU rules, Romania’s packaging waste recycling market is a textbook case in revealing this outcome predicted by economic theory, as our statistical data suggest. The conclusion is that it is equally perilous to neglect the calibration of legislative targets according to institutional and economic development as it is to reject environmental claims based on their costs.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a praised and promoted business behavior nowadays, widely understood as the entrepreneurs’ and managers’ attempts to make amends for some of the excesses that their economic activities bring about, for instance with regard to environmental negative externalities or to public ecological assets under-provision. It is of utmost importance to duly process and profess the CSR concept, one placed at a subtle interplay between business profitability and civic/social responsibility, between economic and ethical/legal realms, since the misrepresentation of economic agents’ benchmark of proper conduct might harm both social landscape and ecological environment. Still, despite its rich occurrence in scholarly literature as well as recurrence in business practices, CSR requires both further and thorough clarification, since many studies postulate that the free-market mindset is rather dismissive of CSR solicitudes. The current research paper fills such a sensitive conceptual gap by explaining why CSR regards are logically compatible with the free markets, with no reason to decree a market failure in this matter. The work takes the form of an analytical research, of an explicitly conceptual nature, based on praxeologically-deductive argumentation, documenting the fundamental compatibility of CSR with the free market order, populated by profit-driven capitalist corporations that, far from being reckless, are disciplined by the rule of law of clearly defined, defended, divestible property rights. As such, the plea adopted the methodological acquis of the Austrian School of law and economics. The main findings of the present study reveal that (a) in economic commonsense, the “profit motive” is the prima facia rule of judiciousness as the care for third-parties’ welfare can be ensured only after own well-being has been secured, while (b) ethically, “social responsibility”, as an extra-contractual duty, does build up on top of, not as trade-off with a robust property rights order.

The concept of cultural heritage covers the tangible and intangible things bequeathed from the past generations along with a spiritual signification, beyond any other serviceableness. Anthropologists, sociologists, philosophers and aesthetes are the critical reviewers of the field, while legalists and economists contribute with their own concerns: regulation and evaluation. Be it of tangible nature – i.e., buildings, sites, paintings, sculptures or various other artefacts – or of an intangible one – i.e., traditions, practices, beliefs, literary or musical compositions –, the cultural heritage has challenged the economists urging them to offer sophisticated tools to assess its value, to make cost-benefit analyses with respect to its preservation, restoration or reuse. The supporters of regulation in the cultural goods market justify it through the fact that the market cannot provide in an efficient manner this type of goods, the solution being national government intervention – i.e., for the regulation and finance of cultural/heritage goods – or even international government regulation, in cases when national states’ failure is encountered. A widespread opinion is that heritage is communal, par excellence, this view implicitly adjusting the acceptation that private property has in the cultural realm. The present paper addresses the reality and the necessity of ownership and movement of heritage goods especially in the international markets, considered as a dangerous vacuum for national cultural treasuries.

The scope of this paper is to explore if the free market and its corollaries - private property and the freedom to trade both nationally and internationally - are compatible with the conservation, search and optimal use of heritage goods. Our argument starts from the fact that culture is not a free-floating wraith but a set of tangible and intangible elements that are attributed special spiritual signification by the present generation and that are dependent on scarce material means to be expressed and passed on to our heirs. By taking scarcity as our starting point, we will provide an economic analysis of the implications that follow from the alternative approaches that can be employed to manage heritage goods, namely, a private property order coordinated through prices or a public property form of organisation coordinated through orders and interdictions. After tracing the implications of these two general principles of allocating resources, we will briefly look at how heritage goods are regulated, both on a national and international level, to gain a better understanding of the spirit that permeates the "rules of the game." Finally, we are going to see how the two general principles (market vs command and control) apply to the debate raging between the cosmopolites and the nationalists regarding the international trade in heritage goods. After carefully scrutinising some of the arguments put forward in this dispute over the appropriate means to be used, we conclude that free markets and free trade are the only adequate ways for reaching the objective sought by those on both sides of the debate.

The scope of this paper is to analyze Mises’s proposed plan for addressing the problems of militant nationalism and economic nationalism that were plaguing Central and Eastern Europe in the interwar and post-war eras. Due to this region’s overlapping nationalities and geopolitical tensions, Mises had to identify a pragmatic solution that could work in an age of economic interventionism. Starting from this objective, Mises specifically designed a supra-national institutional framework that could eliminate discrimination, ensure peace in the region, and simultaneously represent a rallying point for collective defence against the menace of the dynamic nations. We will show that Mises thought-out this compromise solution very carefully by using scientific insights and his deep understanding of the relations in the area. Furthermore, his plan had built-in elements that would have been conducive to the re-emergence of the classical-liberal international order. Also, because Mises’s plan was never implemented, we will critically assess it considering the actual historical outcome that followed the Second World War.