Central banks are promising a more climate-based focus on matters ranging from communication to prudential regulation and supervision, including monetary policy. The chapter examines the various arguments that analyze whether the European Central Bank (ECB) can tackle climate change, in light of its mandates. In our view, climate change fits within the narrower central bank mandates, focused on price stability, while other ‘peripheral’ mandates and ‘transversal’ environmental principles can play a supporting role. Prudential regulation and supervision can also be a main point for assimilation. Finally, we examine the considerations of courts of climate change when scrutinizing governmental action and compare them to the considerations of courts of ECB acts. We conclude that the integration of sustainability considerations, and especially climate change, into the ECB price stability mandate seems to be on relatively firm legal ground.

Climate risks pose significant financial challenges that align with the stability mandates of central banks and supervisors. They can lead to economic losses impacting households, firms, and financial institutions, potentially threatening financial stability. Current supervisory efforts have focused on microprudential policies, with the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS) establishing a comprehensive approach across the Basel Framework’s three pillars. However, the systemic nature of climate risks necessitates macroprudential responses as well. Like other systemic risks, climate risks are widespread in financial markets and can lead to amplified financial disruptions. However, unlike other systemic risks, climate risks are foreseeable and irreversible, although they are subject to uncertainty in timing and outcomes. This chapter argues that effective macroprudential measures, such as systemic capital buffers and concentration limits, can enhance resilience and mitigate future risks but require careful calibration to avoid adverse effects. Against this background, and given that immediate action is essential to prevent delayed responses that could exacerbate financial instability, central banks and supervisors could prioritize large institutions and high-risk sectors in initial implementations.

The hypothesis at the outset of this contribution is that the position of central banks as independent non-majoritarian institutions needs to be reconsidered to the extent that they actively engage in climate change mitigation activities. It is argued that greening monetary policy calls for a reassessment of the democratic legitimacy of central banks, where the constitutional position of central banks has been informed by the model of the conservative independent central banker and justified by the specificity of their mandate and the vulnerability of monetary policy to political tempering. This also applies to the European Central Bank, whereby the question arises whether climate change mitigation should be delegated to independent central banks in the first place and, if so, what the challenges are in securing their democratic legitimacy for engaging in such activities. It is argued that a clear task must be left for the democratic institutions to take the necessary political decisions and to undertake the necessary balancing of interests in making the distributional choices necessary to effectively address climate change. The latter must not be left to non-majoritarian institutions.

A severe earthquake has affected an area surrounded by oil refineries. During the initial response, an accident at a nearby location results in several patients becoming contaminated with oil. All patients are brought to the field hospital and require decontamination. Most patients are only mildly injured, but one suffers airway damage from oil and other hydrocarbons. The patient undergoes advanced airway management and is evacuated to a local hospital. The other patients are treated and released.

This chapter considers the analog of the time-dependent Hartree–Fock (mean-field) decoupling treated in Part I and extends it to the broken-symmetry phase for superfluid fermions. Two coupled equations for the “normal” and “anomalous” time-dependent single-particle Green’s functions are obtained, which extend to nonequilibrium situations the equations originally obtained at equilibrium by Gor’kov, soon after the BCS original article on the theory of superconductivity. Accordingly, the time-dependent gap (order) parameter is also introduced.

In today’s climate, researchers may feel pressured to always adopt the most complex, cutting-edge research techniques. Although such techniques have advantages, they also have disadvantages. In this chapter, we walk the reader through each stage of the research process: developing research questions and hypotheses, recruiting participants, selecting a study methodology and associated statistics, and disseminating results. At each stage, we compare the relative strengths and weaknesses of what we call “Column A” approaches (i.e., relatively simple, tried-and-true research techniques) versus “Column B” approaches (i.e., newer and more complex techniques). We argue that the best overall solution, both for individual researchers and for the field as a whole, is to adopt a diverse mix of different techniques. Throughout, we consider how open science techniques might potentially aid in achieving a healthy balance between different approaches. We also suggest mechanisms whereby often-expensive Column B approaches could be made more widely accessible.

The rise of public regulation of private law relationships has resulted in a thorny legal landscape across regulated markets shaped by the complex interplay between multiple actors, including legislators, regulatory agencies, and courts, and fraught with tensions between public and private interests. This chapter sets out the book’s purpose, namely, to offer a new theoretical perspective on the relationship between market regulation and private law that is built on the claim that these two forms of legal discourse are two sides of the same coin that can be reconciled with each other. The chapter explains the background to this study and the research design, focusing on the interaction between EU private law as a subset of market regulation and traditional national private law. It begins with a brief account of the growing role of market regulation in the private law domain and then proceeds to identify the core questions that the collision between market regulation and private law gives rise to, which underlie the book. The chapter further explains the novelty of this work in relation to existing literature on private law and regulation, as well as its approach to the subject.

The rise of market regulation in the private law domain has challenged the exclusive role of traditional private law, notably contract and tort law, in governing relations between private parties. At present, well-established private law norms, such as the principle of good faith or a duty of care, increasingly coexist with regulatory standards. This chapter explores the relationship between regulatory standards and private law norms, focusing on how national private law responds and should respond to market regulation with a European origin. It develops three models of the relationship between EU regulatory standards and traditional private law norms relating to the same subject matter – separation, substitution, and complementarity – and discusses their key characteristics, manifestations, and implications. This analysis shows that each of the models strikes a balance between the competing considerations differently, putting more or less weight on the pursuit of the common good or interpersonal justice, legal certainty or individual fairness, and uniformity or diversity. The chapter also assesses these models in terms of their potential to reconcile EU regulatory standards with traditional private law norms and draws out some of the practical implications of this analysis for EU private lawmaking and enforcement.