The Economic Impact of the Arts, Film, History and Tourism Industries in Connecticut

This report contains four ecnomic impact studies corresponding to the four divisions (arts, film, historic preservation, and tourism) of the Connecticut Commission on Culture & Tourism that commissioned them. There is an Executive Summar, the four industry studies, and a methodological overview that includes a discussion of the overall approach, economic impact multipliers, data sources, and an explanation of the conservative nature of the studies.Arts, Film, Historic preservation, heritage, Tourism, travel, impact, Connecticut,

31st Annual Meeting and Associated Programs of the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC 2016) : part two

Background The immunological escape of tumors represents one of the main ob- stacles to the treatment of malignancies. The blockade of PD-1 or CTLA-4 receptors represented a milestone in the history of immunotherapy. However, immune checkpoint inhibitors seem to be effective in specific cohorts of patients. It has been proposed that their efficacy relies on the presence of an immunological response. Thus, we hypothesized that disruption of the PD-L1/PD-1 axis would synergize with our oncolytic vaccine platform PeptiCRAd. Methods We used murine B16OVA in vivo tumor models and flow cytometry analysis to investigate the immunological background. Results First, we found that high-burden B16OVA tumors were refractory to combination immunotherapy. However, with a more aggressive schedule, tumors with a lower burden were more susceptible to the combination of PeptiCRAd and PD-L1 blockade. The therapy signifi- cantly increased the median survival of mice (Fig. 7). Interestingly, the reduced growth of contralaterally injected B16F10 cells sug- gested the presence of a long lasting immunological memory also against non-targeted antigens. Concerning the functional state of tumor infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs), we found that all the immune therapies would enhance the percentage of activated (PD-1pos TIM- 3neg) T lymphocytes and reduce the amount of exhausted (PD-1pos TIM-3pos) cells compared to placebo. As expected, we found that PeptiCRAd monotherapy could increase the number of antigen spe- cific CD8+ T cells compared to other treatments. However, only the combination with PD-L1 blockade could significantly increase the ra- tio between activated and exhausted pentamer positive cells (p= 0.0058), suggesting that by disrupting the PD-1/PD-L1 axis we could decrease the amount of dysfunctional antigen specific T cells. We ob- served that the anatomical location deeply influenced the state of CD4+ and CD8+ T lymphocytes. In fact, TIM-3 expression was in- creased by 2 fold on TILs compared to splenic and lymphoid T cells. In the CD8+ compartment, the expression of PD-1 on the surface seemed to be restricted to the tumor micro-environment, while CD4 + T cells had a high expression of PD-1 also in lymphoid organs. Interestingly, we found that the levels of PD-1 were significantly higher on CD8+ T cells than on CD4+ T cells into the tumor micro- environment (p < 0.0001). Conclusions In conclusion, we demonstrated that the efficacy of immune check- point inhibitors might be strongly enhanced by their combination with cancer vaccines. PeptiCRAd was able to increase the number of antigen-specific T cells and PD-L1 blockade prevented their exhaus- tion, resulting in long-lasting immunological memory and increased median survival

Three Essays on Economics in the Music Industry

In my first chapter I examine the ability of producers to profitably price discriminate information goods in the music industry given the presence of peer-to-peer file sharing networks. Previous economic literature suggests that it is not profitable to price discriminate information goods. The introduction of a non-pecuniary competition from peer-to-peer file sharing networks into the model makes price discrimination of an information good profitable. In this instance, price discrimination allows producers to recapture more of the market that was lost to peer-to-peer file sharing than is lost as consumers switch to a lower price version of the information good. In my second chapter I examine the emergence of multiple rights deals in the music industry to determine the implications they have on market efficiency in the music industry. Framing this within the context of a principle multi-agent model with positive production externalities, I find that with multiple independent agents production externalities are not fully captured resulting significant underproduction beyond that of the traditional principal-agent problem. Multiple rights deals allow the agent to capture the full benefit of the production externality, however, they also induce in additional inefficiencies in the principal-agent relationship. In all but the highest state of nature, the additional inefficiencies induced in the principal-agent relationship dominate the efficiency gains of internalizing the externality. My final chapter examines the recent events in the music industry from a law and economics approach. The advent of file sharing represented an unprecedented threat to the music industry, as it removed most of the physical barriers to copyright infringement. I begin by setting the legal framework within which the music industry operates. I briefly analyze the application of copyright law to the music industry, and focus on the economic theory of optimal copyright protection in the music industry. I examine several of the major past legal decisions that helped to shape and inform the discussion of copyright and extend this analysis to the most recent legal decisions involving file sharing and copyright in the music industry