Search
Results
-
The Unintended Consequences of Pandemic Lockdowns: Evidence on Domestic Violence in Italy
(2024)Center for Law & Economics Working Paper SeriesThis study examines the effects of Italy’s COVID-19 tiered lockdown system on domestic violence. The policy implemented categorizes regions into different weekly risk levels, imposing corresponding mobility restrictions—the higher the risk, the greater the constraints on mobility outside the home. Leveraging this setting, we employ a difference-in-differences approach with staggered treatment adoption and heterogeneous treatment effects ...Working Paper -
The importance of tipping points for sustainable development
(2024)Economics Working Paper SeriesSolving major sustainability problems such as climate change and the loss of biodiversity requires overcoming a fundamental dilemma: on the one hand, central decisions on the realignment of the economy and society should be quick and far-reaching, on the other hand, actual decision-makers are strongly oriented towards established structures, which entail great inertia and path dependencies. As a result, expectations and reality are often ...Working Paper -
How much should public transport services be expanded, and who should pay?
(2024)Arbeitsberichte Verkehrs- und RaumplanungThe twin challenge of increasing capacity to accommodate growing travel demand while simultaneously decarbonizing the transport sector places enormous pressure on public transport (PT) systems globally. Arguably the most fundamental policy choice and trade-off in designing and operating PT systems in the coming years will be service levels versus cost implications. On the presumption that public (citizen and consumer) opinion is crucial ...Working Paper -
PipeRAG: Fast Retrieval-Augmented Generation via Algorithm-System Co-design
(2024)Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) can enhance the generation quality of large language models (LLMs) by incorporating external token databases. However, retrievals from large databases can constitute a substantial portion of the overall generation time, particularly when retrievals are periodically performed to align the retrieved content with the latest states of generation. In this paper, we introduce PipeRAG, a novel algorithm-system ...Working Paper -
Boosting Sluggish Climate Policy: Endogenous Substitution, Learning, and Energy Efficiency Improvements
(2024)Economics Working Paper SeriesThere is widespread concern that climate policy is moving too slowly and that decarbonization of economic development is coming too late for effective climate protection. We analyze three different effects that emerge endogenously during decarbonization and amplify current policies: growing substitutability of dirty inputs with clean inputs, learning and scale effects in new renewables, and efficiency im provements in the application of ...Working Paper -
De-biasing electric vehicle adoption with personalized nudging
(2024)Economics Working Paper SeriesReplacing combustion engine vehicles with battery electric vehicles (BEV) is essential to achieving climate objectives and advancing sustainable transportation, aligning with the United Nations Development Goals and the Paris Agreement. In this project, we identify three perception biases linked to EV adoption and address them with personalized non-monetary information treatments to increase the adoption of BEVs among owners of internal ...Working Paper -
The Strategic Value of Data Sharing in Interdependent Markets
(2024)Large, generalist, technology firms—so-called “big-tech” firms—powerful in their primary market, routinely enter secondary markets consisting of specialist firms. Naturally, one might expect a specialist firm to be fiercely protective of its data as a way to maintain its market position in the secondary market. Counter to this intuition, we demonstrate that a specialist firm willingly shares its market data with an intruding tech generalist. ...Working Paper -
Counting crime? A review on the production of crime data
(2024)CURATE Working PaperThis literature review is aimed at providing an overview of the arguments, concerns, and issues raised by criminologists, sociologists, and psychologists regarding crime data and their quality. Given the increasing, widespread use of (crime) data to serve analytical purposes (e.g., predictive policing) and global discussions and measures on big data (policing), this review presents relevant and timely insights. It assists our understanding ...Working Paper -
Education System Permeability
(2024)CES Working PapersThis paper proposes a model of returns to education based on the permeability of the education system. We define permeability as the availability of different program types up to the highest education levels and the ability to transition between programs (Caves et al., 2023). We develop six permeability models that reflect variation in the availability of programs and transitions. Building on Heckman et al. (2006)’s work on returns to ...Working Paper -
Genetic insurance and the value of genetic information
(2024)Losing at the genetic lottery can put you at a higher risk for debilitating illnesses, disability, or early death. This paper investigates the value of learning about one’s risk, e.g. through genetic testing, when the information cannot be used to influence health outcomes. In a 3-periods setting where insurance markets are complete, I show that individuals prefer consumption levels that depend on their risk type, suggesting that genetic ...Working Paper