This article explores the complex dynamics of financial innovation in early modern times, challenging linear models of temporal and spatial divisions that tend to shape our understanding of the evolution of financial systems. It supports the idea that innovation should be viewed as a non-linear and contextual process, involving diverse stakeholders and characterised by interactions and unexpected occurrences. The study focuses on the dissemination and trajectories of financial innovations, specifically the bill of exchange and its variation, the ricorsa, as well as the transferability and negotiability of commercial paper. It does so by investigating the interactions and exchanges between merchants and bankers from diverse backgrounds during the sixteenth-century Lyon fairs, using the archival records of one of the first Italian banks in Lyon (Salviati). The study reveals the mutual influence and acculturation among these agents and challenges the compartmentalisation of financial expertise. Through an analysis of transactions recorded in the Salviati bank's ledgers, the article highlights previously unknown uses of commercial paper by Southern merchant communities and discusses the factors that may have hindered the full-scale development of endorsement and discount in the Lyon trading networks, despite their potential benefits. The results provide insights into the intricate nature of financial innovation and the influence of structural and cultural factors on its development.

After Southern Italy became part of a new, national state in 1860, its financial sector was radically transformed under Piedmontese influence. This article challenges the conventional wisdom that the aggressive penetration of a Northern credit institution, the future Bank of Italy, into the South following unification harmed the local banking system and highlights instead its transformative role in modernising and deepening regional credit markets. On the basis of new statistics, banking and political records, this contribution shows that the introduction of ‘foreign’ banking from Northern Italy under the auspices of a national, constitutional government resulted in a financial revolution and a democratisation of credit supply to the advantage of the whole South. Public banking under the Bourbons had privileged the needs of an absolute government over those of the private economy and of the capital city over those of the rest of the country, retarding financial development. Credit undersupply and regional fragmentation could only be overcome through the integration of the South within a larger Italian market, in which, however, the lion's share went to a predominantly Northern institution.

The processes of globalisation, market deregulation and the retreat of the welfare state in advanced capitalist societies have revitalised the debate about how to reconcile economic development and social cohesion. This debate has been widespread in Italy, where great differences occur between local contexts as regards economic performance, the level of inequality and, more generally, the cohesion of the social fabric. Within this framework, this paper explores the level of both economic development and social cohesion in Italian provinces, through the analysis of secondary data. With particular reference to the Italian situation, the article therefore contributes to the debate on the focalisation and operationalisation of the two concepts. Finally, the complex relation between economic development and social cohesion is analysed, and its non-linear trend is outlined.

International environmental law (IEL) as a discipline has failed to respond to problems of fairness in a meaningful and systematic fashion. Whilst IEL has long acknowledged the existence of competing claims regarding the fair distribution of costs, resources, and responsibilities, fairness remains at the periphery of the disciplinary discourse. The present essay considers some possible explanations for this neglect. The first part of the essay examines a set of implicit assumptions and beliefs in which IEL is embedded, which somewhat prevent genuine and critical engagement with fairness issues. The second part of the essay considers normative and policy arguments recently developed in the law and economics literature that explicitly argue against the notion that fairness should play a role in the design and implementation of environmental regimes. The essay concludes by calling for a more robust engagement with fairness issues and by considering some of the implications this project may have for IEL.