Artificial intelligence, firms and consumer behavior: A survey

The current advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) are likely to have profound economic implications and bring about new trade-offs, thereby posing new challenges from a policymaking point of view. What is the impact of these technologies on the labor market and firms? Will algorithms reduce consumers' biases or will they rather originate new ones? How competition will be affected by AI-powered agents? This study is a first attempt to survey the growing literature on the multi-faceted economic effects of the recent technological advances in AI that involve machine learning applications. We first review research on the implications of AI on firms, focusing on its impact on labor market, productivity, skill composition and innovation. Then we examine how AI contributes to shaping consumer behavior and market competition. We conclude by discussing how public policies can deal with the radical changes that AI is already producing and is going to generate in the future for firms and consumers

Personalizing Cancer Pain Therapy: Insights from the Rational Use of Analgesics (RUA) Group

Introduction: A previous Delphi survey from the Rational Use of Analgesics (RUA) project involving Italian palliative care specialists revealed some discrepancies between current guidelines and clinical practice with a lack of consensus on items regarding the use of strong opioids in treating cancer pain. Those results represented the basis for a new Delphi study addressing a better approach to pain treatment in patients with cancer. Methods: The study consisted of a two-round multidisciplinary Delphi study. Specialists rated their agreement with a set of 17 statements using a 5-point Likert scale (0 = totally disagree and 4 = totally agree). Consensus on a statement was achieved if the median consensus score (MCS) (expressed as value at which at least 50% of participants agreed) was at least 4 and the interquartile range (IQR) was 3–4. Results: This survey included input from 186 palliative care specialists representing all Italian territory. Consensus was reached on seven statements. More than 70% of participants agreed with the use of low dose of strong opioids in moderate pain treatment and valued transdermal route as an effective option when the oral route is not available. There was strong consensus on the importance of knowing opioid pharmacokinetics for therapy personalization and on identifying immediate-release opioids as key for tailoring therapy to patients’ needs. Limited agreement was reached on items regarding breakthrough pain and the management of opioid-induced bowel dysfunction. Conclusion: These findings may assist clinicians in applying clinical evidence to routine care settings and call for a reappraisal of current pain treatment recommendations with the final aim of optimizing the clinical use of strong opioids in patients with cancer

Carpe Data: Protecting online privacy with naive users

In this paper, we study the optimal design of incentives to induce a digital platform to limit the extraction of data from users, whose privacy loss is further aggravated by their naive use of the platform. We show that caps on the amount of data collected can induce the optimal data-saving effort by the platform. If the platform's effort is not observable, a menu of data caps should be provided and it entails a higher (lower) loss of privacy for less (more) naive users, relative to the first best. We also show that compensating users for their data can efficiently incentivize effort, but might increase the privacy loss of more naive users

Investment and regulation in MENA countries: The impact of Regulatory Independence

National regulatory agencies (NRAs) have been recently set up in several Mediterranean countries with the aim of increasing infrastructure investments and converging towards a harmonized regulatory framework with Europe. Our study empirically investigates the impact of the presence of independent regulatory bodies on the growth of electric generation capacity for a sample of 12 MENA countries (Algeria, Djibouti, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Syria, Tunisia, Yemen) from 1990 to 2011. We find that the inception of a regulatory agency has a positive impact on capacity growth and, although the set-up of the NRA is influenced by the quality of the institutional environment, the impact survives when we control for socio-political factors. Our results suggest that independent regulatory agencies may act as a catalyst of a number of positive effects generated by the quality of the political institutions