Does inducing choice procedures make individuals better off? An experimental study

Open access via Springer Compact Agreement We would like to thank Marco Tecilla for excellent computer programming. We are extremely grateful to an anonymous referee for her/his support to our paper, the many insightful comments, and the valuable suggestions on the research program. We also thank Miguel Costa-Gomes, Paola Manzini, Ariel Rubinstein, the participants to the 2016 International Meeting on Experimental and Behavioral Social Sciences (Rome), the seminar audiences at the universities of Aberdeen, St Andrews and Trento and the editor of this journal. Financial support from the University of Trento’s core funding is gratefully acknowledged. Any error is our own responsibility.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Do Losses Matter? The Effect of Information-Search Technologies on Risky Choices

Despite its importance, relatively little attention has been devoted to studying the effects of exposing individuals to digital choice interfaces. In two pre-registered lottery-choice experiments, we administer three information-search technologies that are based on well-known heuristics: in the ABS (alternative-based search) treatment, subjects explore outcomes and corresponding probabilities within lotteries; in the CBS (characteristic-based search) treatment, subjects explore outcomes and corresponding probabilities across lotteries; in the Baseline treatment, subjects view outcomes and corresponding probabilities all at once. We find that (i) when lottery outcomes comprise gains and losses (experiment 1), exposing subjects to the CBS technology systematically makes them choose safer lotteries, compared to the subjects that are exposed to the other technologies, and (ii) when lottery outcomes comprise gains only (experiment 2), the above results are reversed: exposing subjects to the CBS technology systematically makes them choose riskier lotteries. By combining the information-search and choice analysis, we offer an interpretation of our results that is based on prospect theory, whereby the information-search technology subjects are exposed to contributes to determine the level of attention that the lottery attributes receive, which in turn has an effect on the reference point

Inducing Alternative-Based and Characteristic-Based Search Procedures in Risky Choice

We would like to thank an Editor of this journal, two referees, Ramses H. Abul Naga, Santiago Sanchez-Pages, and Martin Wersing for helpful suggestions. We are grateful to the seminar audiences at the universities of Aberdeen, East Anglia, and Trento, and the participants to the Workshop on Economics of Competition, Regulation, and Consumer Protection (Glasgow), the 43rd Symposium of the Spanish Economic Association (Madrid), the 2018 ESA World Meeting (Berlin), the 2017 IAREP Conference on ‘Leveraging Behavioral Insights’ (Tel Aviv) and the 11th IMPRS Workshop on ‘Adapting Behavior in a Fundamentally Uncertain World’ (Trento) for their comments. We also thank Marco Tecilla for great computer programming and Erika Magnago for superb research assistance. Financial support from Aberdeen and Trento’s core funding is gratefully acknowledged. An earlier version of this paper was circulated under the title: ‘You Dislike Risk? Then Do Not Search By Characteristic: A Lottery-Choice Experiment’. Any error is our own responsibility. http://journal.sjdm.org/copyright.htmPeer reviewedPublisher PD

The maximum cardinality of minimal inversion complete sets in finite reflection groups

We compute for reflection groups of type A,B,D,F4,H3 and for dihedral groups a statistic counting the maximal cardinality of a set of elements in the group whose generalized inversions yield the full set of inversions and which are minimal with respect to this property. We also provide lower bounds for the E types that we conjecture to be the exact value of our statistic

BDP/formoterol MART asthma exacerbation benefit increases with blood eosinophil level

A number of studies have evaluated the effectiveness of a “Maintenance And Reliever Therapy” (MART) regimen combining in a single inhaler the rapid-acting, long-acting β2-agonist (LABA) formoterol fumarate (FF) with an inhaled corticosteroid (ICS) in asthma. Such a regimen is now established for the treatment of moderate-to-severe asthma in adolescents and adults in many guidelines. Furthermore, rescue short-acting β2-agonists (SABAs) are no longer recommended as sole therapy even for patients with mild asthma, and an ICS/FF combination used as needed is the preferred reliever therapy

Association between subclinical atherosclerosis and oral inflammation: a cross-sectional study

Background: The aim of this cross-sectional study was to investigate the association between carotid intima-media thickness (c-IMT) values and periodontal and peri-implant diseases in a sample of patients with hypertension. Methods: A total of 151 participants with presence of at least one dental implant in function for >5 years were recruited. Anthropometric measurements, 24-h ambulatory blood pressure monitoring, ultrasound assessment of carotid arteries (c-IMT and presence of plaque) were recorded and venous blood samples obtained. An oral examination was performed by calibrated examiners to ascertain prevalence and severity of periodontal and peri-implant diseases. Binomial logistic regression was performed to investigate the potential association between various measures of exposure of dental diseases and predictors of cardiovascular risk (c-IMT > 0.9 mm and presence of plaque or their combination). Results: Diagnosis of periodontitis (OR 6.71, 95% CI: 2.68-16.76, P < 0.001), cumulative mucosal/gingival inflammation (Periodontal Screening and Recording score) (OR 1.25, 95% CI:1.12-1.41, P < 0.001), and mucositis (OR 3.34, 95% CI:1.13-9.85, P < 0.05) were associated with c-IMT > 0.9 mm and/or plaque presence independent of age, sex, smoking, 24 h systolic blood pressure and body mass index differences. No statistically significant results were noted for peri-implantitis. Linear regression models confirmed a positive association of cumulative mucosal/gingival inflammation (β = 0.011, SE 0.002, P < 0.001), diagnosis of periodontitis (β = 0.114, SE 0.020, P < 0.001), and peri-implant diseases (β = 0.011, SE 0.002, P < 0.001) with increased c-IMT values. Conclusions: This study confirms a positive association between mucosal/gingival inflammation and subclinical atherosclerosis assessed by c-IMT values and the presence of carotid plaque in patients with hypertension, independent of traditional cardiovascular risk factors. Future studies are needed to further characterize this relationship