Page 153 - IANUS n. 26 - Fideiussioni omnibus e intesa antitrust: interferenze e rimedi
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IANUS n. 26-2022                       ISSN 1974-9805





                           7
               the decision» . From this perspective, if «Cardano, Pascal, and Fermat provided
               a method for figuring the risks in each throw of the dice, … Bernoulli introduces
               us to the risk-taker - the player who chooses how much to bet or whether to bet at
               all. While probability theory sets up the choices, Bernoulli defines the motivations
               of the person who does the choosing. This is an entirely new area of study and
               body of theory. Bernoulli laid the intellectual groundwork for much of what was
               to follow, not just in economics, but in theories about how people make decisions
               and choices in every aspect of life» .
                                               8
                                                                              9
                  From  that  time  onwards,  through  Gauss’s  normal  distribution ,  Poincaré’s
                                                                                        10
               study of information/decision-making and Bachelier’s analysis of speculation ,
               the theory of risk has further advanced through Arrow , Knight and Keynes’s
                                                                   11
               notion of risk as ‘measurable uncertainty’ . An uncertainty whose source can be
                                                      12
               found in others’ intentions, as explained by Von Neumann, Morgenstern and
               Nash’s game theory ; and whose measure has led financial theory to well-known
                                  13
               concepts  such  as  portfolio  selection,  diversification,  the  capital  asset  pricing
               model  (by  Markowitz  and  Sharpe),  the  Black  and  Scholes  formula,  and  to
               prospect theory in behavioural economics (by Kahneman and Tversky) .
                                                                                 14
                  Of course, this very concise introduction to Bernstein’s book does not even
               distantly  mirror  the  richness  of  its  contents:  the  interested  reader  will  find  in
               Against  the  gods,  and  its  broad  bibliography,  much  better  satisfaction  of  his
               intellectual  enquiries.  But,  at  least  superficially,  this  summary  highlights  how
               centuries of extraordinary intellectual elaboration in Western society transformed
               the future from an antagonist into a product of a (human) present where risk is
               quantified,  measured,  and  managed  to  mitigate  the  perils  of  the  unexpected.
               Accordingly, within this cultural setting, activities of risk-taking, -transfer and -
               pooling (i.e., banking, investment, insurance, or even gambling, businesses) have
               become  in  the  West  a  source  per  se  of  legitimate  profit,  where,  in  the
               (extra)ordinary enterprise of risk management, as we know it today, the ‘gods’ are
               left aside.
                  But from where does the idea of ‘risk’ come from? And how much does it
               explain about human nature, given that its story, in the end, is all about «[t]he
               actions we dare to take» and «how free we are to make choices»?
                  If the Latin  resecare, resicum, risicum, riscus  are the direct precedents for the
               Italian risicare, meaning ‘to dare’, and risco (from which the current Italian rischio,

                  7  ID., 100. Daniel Bernoulli, in fact, introduced the revolutionary idea that «the value of an item
               must not be based on its price,  but rather on the utility that it yields», which varies from person to
               person (BERNSTEIN, cit., 99; italics in the original text).
                  8  ID., 108 (italics in the original text).
                  9  ID., 136.
                  10  ID., 200.
                  11  ID., 204.
                  12  ID., 219.
                  13  ID., respectively at 232, 235, and 243.
                  14  ID., respectively at 260, 304 ff., 270.

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