Preference Based Subjective Beliefs

We test the empirical content of the assumption of preference dependent beliefs using a behavioral model of strategic decision making in which the rankings of individuals over final outcomes in simple games influence their beliefs over the opponent’s behavior. This approach— by analogy with Psychological Game Theory—allows for interdependence between preferences and beliefs but reverses the order of causality. We use existing evidence from a multi-stage experiment in which we first elicit distributional preferences in a Random Dictator Game, then estimate beliefs in a related 2×2 effort game conditional on these preferences. Our structural estimations confirm our working hypothesis on how social preferences shape beliefs: subjects with higher guilt (envy) expect others to put less (more) effort, which reduces the expected difference in payoffs.Financial support from the Spanish Ministry of Economic Development (ECO2015-65820-P) and Generalitat Valenciana (Grupos 3/086) is gratefully acknowledged

Outpatient healthcare costs associated with overweight and obesity in Italy

To evaluate outpatient healthcare expenditure associated with different levels of BMI and glucose metabolism alterations

Vax Populi: The Social Costs of Online Vaccine Skepticism

We quantify the effects of online vaccine skepticism on vaccine uptake and health complications for individuals not targeted by immunization campaigns. We collect the universe of Italian vaccine-related tweets for 2013-2018, label anti-vax stances using NLP, and match them with vaccine coverage and vaccine-preventable hospitalizations at the most granular level (municipalityv and year). We propose a model of opinion dynamics on social networks that matches the observed data and shows that a vaccine mandate increases the average vaccination rate, but it also increases the controversialness around the topic, endogenously fueling polarization of opinions among users. We then leverage the intransitivity in network connections with “friends of friends” to isolate the exogenous source of variation for users’ vaccine-related stances and implement an IV strategy. We find that a 10pp increase in the municipality anti-vax stance causes a 0.43pp decrease in coverage of the Measles-Mumps-Rubella vaccine, 2.1 additional hospitalizations every 100k residents among individuals untargeted by the immunization (newborns, the immunosuppressed, pregnant women) and an excess expenditure of 7,311 euro, representing an 11% increase in health expenses

When Particulate Matter Strikes Cities: Social Disparities and Health Costs of Air Pollution

We investigate the heterogeneous effects of particle pollution on Italian daily hospitalizations and their costs by exploiting public transportation strikes as plausibly-exogenous shocks in pollution exposure. We find that a one standard deviation increase in PM causes additional 0.79 hospitalizations per 100,000 residents, and the effect is stronger for the elderly, low educated individuals and migrants. Furthermore, we find that young individuals, an arguably healthy age group, exhibit economically meaningful responses to air pollution with an effect ranging between 0.45 and 1.04. Our results imply a large role of avoidance behavior driving heterogeneous marginal health effects. Total daily costs of a one standard deviation increase in PM represent 0.5% of the total daily health expenditure, and 85% of this additional spending comes from more patients hospitalized, while the remaining 15% can be attributable to more costly, and likely more complex, hospitalizations

When Particulate Matter Strikes Cities. Social Disparities and Health Costs of Air Pollution.

We investigate unequal effects of daily particulate matter (PM) concentrations on Italian hospi- talizations by exploiting daily episodes of public transportation strikes as an instrumental variable for pollution exposure. We show that hospitalizations resulting from higher pollution are not only more likely to occur (extensive margin), but are also more complex to deal with (intensive margin). This penalty is larger for the young, the elderly, the less educated and migrants from low income countries. In order to appreciate the heterogeneity of our results, we show how municipalities with different age structures and PM exposure face similar hospitalization costs

Nudging food waste decisions at restaurants

This article evaluates the impact of two nudges on stimulating the use of doggy bags in restaurants. We run a field experiment at 14 restaurants in the province of Turin (Italy). In the first group of restaurants, we manipulated the descriptive social norm. In a second group we changed the default option - whereby customers asked for the doggy bag - by instead directing the waiter to automatically deliver the doggy bag unless told not to. A third group of restaurants was used as a control with no intervention. We find that the social norm intervention led to a sizeable increase in the use of doggy bags, while the default manipulation had a non-statistically significant impact

Additional file 1 of Outpatient healthcare costs associated with overweight and obesity in Italy

Supplementary Material

Additional file 2 of Outpatient healthcare costs associated with overweight and obesity in Italy

Supplementary Material

Additional file 3 of Outpatient healthcare costs associated with overweight and obesity in Italy

Supplementary Material