[Nudges and the pandemic: An analysis from economics and behavioural law. SESPAS Report 2022]. / Nudges y la pandemia: un análisis desde la economía y el derecho conductual. Informe SESPAS 2022.

Behavioural economics (a combination of economics and psychology) provides keys to understand decisions made by politicians and citizens along the COVID-19 pandemic through the so-called cognitive biases. These biases can be offset by implementing behavioural interventions named "nudges" in order to promote responsible behaviours in the "new normality". This paper analyses, from a behavioural economics perspective, past, present and future of behavioural aspects surrounding the pandemic. Besides, this paper proposes different ways to formalize nudges according to law, which needs the fulfilment of three minimum requirements, namely: transparency, non-arbitrariness and efficiency. Furthermore, it is also suggested that protocols and contingency plans are set up to face future pandemics, in which both soft (nudge-type) interventions and hard legal regulations play different roles but complementary ones. Nudges can be implemented in a fast and less coercive way, so they are particularly suitable for changing mild misbehaviour, reserving legal sanctions for the more serious ones.

[The vaccine-condition or vaccination passport and its eventual fit into a broad recommended vaccination framework against COVID-19]. / La vacuna-condición o el pasaporte de vacunación y su eventual encaje en un marco general de vacunación recomendada contra la COVID-19.

It is important to think about the eventual application of a COVID-19 vaccination certificate as an eligibility criterion to carry out certain activities and to discuss in advance the problems that the use of this tool may pose in legal terms. To this end, we must begin by stating the assumptions that would be necessary to justify its implantation, including scientific consensus on the scope of the immunity granted by COVID-19 vaccines, especially in blocking transmission in the community. Likewise, it emphasizes the importance of broadening the view in the sense of internalizing that the passport or vaccination pass constitutes only one of the many options within a rich catalog of possibilities when it comes to reinforcing the recommended vaccination model through incentives adopted in the Vaccination Strategy against COVID-19, including the use of nudging. In any case, if conditionality is installed and expanded to the extent of significantly influencing daily life, it could lead to a kind of indirect obligation, with the risk of dysfunctions in terms of equality and systemic coherence if the public powers do not contribute to clearly define the legal limits beforehand and to drive a process that in itself could be dispersed and disorderly.