Artificial intelligence, firms and consumer behavior: A survey

AbstractThe 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

The effects of gamma-radiation on the properties of Brillouin scattering in standard Ge-doped optical fibres

We have experimentally studied the effects of gamma-radiation up to very high total doses on the physical properties of Brillouin scattering in standard commercially available optical fibres. A frequency variation of about 5 MHz for both Brillouin frequency and linewidth has been measured at the total dose of about 10 MGy. The radiation-induced shift has a negligible practical impact and makes Brillouin scattering very immune to radiation, so that distributed sensors based on this interaction exhibit an interesting potential for use in nuclear facilities. © 2006 IOP Publishing Ltd

Frequency-stabilised laser reference system for trace-gas sensing applications from space

A four-wavelength low-power continuous-wave frequency laser reference system has been realised in the 935.4-nm range for water vapour differential absorption lidar (DIAL) applications. The system is built around laboratory extended-cavity and DFB diode lasers. Three lasers are directly locked to three water vapour absorption lines of different strength, whereas the wavelength of the fourth laser lies out of any absorption line (offline). On-line stabilisation is performed by wavelength modulation spectroscopy technique, while precise offline stabilisation is realised by an offset locking at 18.8 GHz. Offset frequency larger than 320 GHz has also been demonstrated at 1.55 μm, based on an all-fibre optical frequency comb. First steps towards the use of a photonic crystal fibre as ultra compact reference cell with long optical pathlength were realised. The developed techniques for direct and offset-lock laser stabilisation can also be applied to other gases and wavelengths, provided the required optical components are available for the laser wavelength considered

Incentivizing the Owner: Why Family Firms offer Pay-for-performance Contracts to their CEOs

We study the managers’ compensation schemes adopted by publicly listed family firms by means of a theoretical model and an empirical analysis. Existing empirical literature finds puzzling evidence about the structure of family CEOs’ pay, which apparently contradicts the fundamental tenets of principal-agent theory under moral hazard. In particular, family CEOs typically exhibit lower expected pay but higher pay-for-performance sensitivity than external managers, despite their large inside ownership. In a theoretical model, we show that the outcome-related compensation structure of family CEOs reduces the CEO’s incentive to divert value from minority shareholders. We test the main hypotheses on a panel of Italian listed family firms (2000-2017), for which we have collected data on CEOs’ parental ties, cash and equity-based components of CEOs’ pay and internal corporate governance mechanisms. The evidence confirms our theoretical predictions

Two-sided asymmetric information in competitive insurance markets

This dissertation studies a competitive insurance market in which a policyholder owns private information about her own riskiness and at the same time insurers (through their higher expertise) are better able to estimate it. If insurers’ estimations are private and identical, we find that, despite the presence of competition, perfect revelation of information is not necessarily achieved and profitable outcomes are possible. Adding competitive pressure may be ineffective in driving the insurance prices downward, as it simply reduces the individual insurer’s profits. The insurers’ informative advantage, however, allows more efficient outcomes. The presence of a bilateral asymmetry can also explain why, in dispersed markets, low risk policyholders may be more insured than high risk ones. Moreover, if insurers’ private estimations are heterogeneous and suffer of some degree of uncertainty, we find that, in addition to the previous results, actuarially fair outcomes for all policyholders are never allowed, despite the presence of competition

Behavioral barriers and the energy efficiency gap: a survey of the literature

Consumers’ irrational reluctance to invest in energy efficiency has raised the policymakers’ concern, who started to question the suitability of traditional energy programs. To address behavioral failures, a revision of former policies seems to be called for. We discuss the main barriers pertaining to consumers’ behavior and their policy implications, suggesting some principles for intervention by regulatory authorities

The Impact of Regulation on Utilities' Investments: A Survey and New Evidence from the Energy Industry

Over the last 30 years, regulated sectors have undergone deep reforms in their institutional configuration, tools and goals. This paper reviews the impact of this evolution on energy firms' investments. First, we survey the existing evidence on the effects of the presence of independent regulatory agencies on utilities' investment rates in Europe in the MENA countries, and in Latin America, focussing on the role of de facto independence and the institutional framework. Second, we discuss the impact of incentive- versus rate-of-return regulation on firms' incentives to invest and the interaction with firm private/public ownership. In this regard, we provide new econometric evidence of the recent developments of regulation, using a sample of European energy utilities tracked from 1997 to 2013. Our results confirm previous findings that investment is higher under incentive regulation than under rate of return regulation. However, differently from the earlier results, we find that investments seem to be driven more by the weighted average cost of capital than by the X-factor. The paper concludes reviewing recent evidence on service quality regulation on firm investment specifically on the impact of reward/penalty schemes on capital and operational expenditures