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

Ultra-broadband investment and economic resilience: Evidence from the Covid-19 pandemic

We study the role of ultra-broadband infrastructures in reducing the economic recession caused by the 2020 pandemic. We exploit the variation in GDP and employment that happened between 2019 and 2020 as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic outbreak, and we investigate whether UBB investments had an impact on economic resilience. We use micro-level data on UBB exposure in 2019 matched with municipality-level information on local GDP and employment levels based on tax declarations for the period 2019–2020. We address the endogeneity between UBB and local income by exploiting the distance from the closest backbone node of the upstream telecommunication network. We find that exposure to UBB mitigates the negative effect of the pandemic on local employment. One additional year of UBB exposure increases local employment by 1.3 percentage points. The effect is stronger in areas hit more severely by the pandemic, thus confirming the role of advanced broadband infrastructures on the economic resilience from negative shocks

Ownership and performance in the Italian stock exchange: the puzzle of family firms

We present new evidence on the relationship between ownership, control and performance in family firms, by using a sample of Italian publicly listed companies from 2000 to 2017. We account for the potential self-selection bias of family firms with an endogenous treatment selection model. We do not find consistent evidence of a performance premium of Italian family firms or family CEOs as family firms achieve superior profitability, but lower market to book ratios. Interestingly, however, firm value is negatively impacted when the high controlling shares are disjointed from family ownership and when the family CEO is also Chair of the board. We also find that the equity stake is significantly lower when the CEO is a member of the controlling family, suggesting a trade-off between ownership and control within family firms

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

The dynamics of switching between governmental and independent venture capitalists: Theory and evidence

In this paper, we study the switching dynamics between independent VCs (IVCs) and governmental VCs (GVCs) by means of a theoretical model and an empirical analysis. By assuming that (i) VCs of higher reputation are more selective in terms of venture quality and (ii) IVCs are mainly motivated by the desire to maximize the economic return of a venture, while GVCs also care about the social repercussions, we have obtained two results. First, low economic return ventures are more likely to be adopted by a new lead GVC that is more reputable than the IVC that drops them. Second, when switches from a GVC to an IVC are considered, a low economic return increases the likelihood that the venture dropped by the incumbent GVC will be re-matched with a less-reputable IVC. Our theoretical predictions match evidence that has emerged from a sample of 9610 rounds of VC financing in the USA between 1998 and 2010. Overall, our analysis sheds light on the puzzling evidence that GVCs seem to be more inclined to drop low return ventures than IVCs, but, at the same time, they are also more willing to adopt them

Experimental investigation on the effect of pump incoherence on nonlinear pump spectral broadening and continuous-wave supercontinuum generation

The development of high-power cw fiber lasers has triggered a great interest in the phenomena of nonlinear pump spectral broadening and cw supercontinuum generation. These effects have very convenient applications in Raman amplification, optical fiber metrology, and fiber sensing. In particular, it was recently shown that pump incoherence has a strong impact in these processes. We study experimentally the effect of pump incoherence in nonlinear pump spectral broadening and cw supercontinuum generation in optical fibers. We show that under certain experimental conditions an optimum degree of pump incoherence yields the best performance in the broadening process. We qualitatively explain these results, and we point out that these results may have important implications in cw supercontinuum optimization.Ministerio de Educación y CienciaComunidad de MadridConsejo Superior de Investigaciones CientíficasUniversidad de Alcal

Spectrally-bounded continuous-wave supercontinuum generation in a fiber with two zero-dispersion wavelengths

A common issue in fiber-based supercontinuum (SC) generation under\ud continuous-wave pumping is that the spectral width of the resulting source is related\ud to the input power of the pump laser used. An increase of the input pump power\ud leads to an increase of the spectral width obtained at the fiber output, and therefore,\ud the average power spectral density (APSD) over the SC spectrum does not grow\ud according to the input power. For some applications it would be desired to have a\ud fixed spectral width in the SC and to increase the average PSD proportionally to the\ud input pump power. In this paper we demonstrate experimentally that SC generation\ud under continuous-wave (CW) pumping can be spectrally bounded by using a fiber\ud with two zero-dispersion wavelengths (ZDWs). Beyond a certain pump power, the\ud spectral width of the SC source remains fixed, and the APSD of the SC grows with\ud the pump power. In our experiment we generate a reasonably flat, spectrally-bounded\ud SC spanning from 1550 nm to 1700 nm. The spectral width of the source is shown to\ud be constant between 3 and 6 W of pump power. Over this range, the increase in input\ud power is directly translated in an increase in the output APSD. The experimental\ud results are confirmed by numerical simulations, which also highlight the sensitivity\ud of this configuration to variations in the fiber dispersion curve. We believe that these\ud results open the way for tailoring the spectral width of high-APSD CW SC by\ud adjusting the fiber dispersion.Ministerio de Educación y CienciaComunidad de MadridConsejo Superior de Investigaciones CientíficasConseil Régional du Nord Pas de Calai