How do Firms ask for Consumers’ Data Permission? The Value of Companies Data Practices.

On May 25, 2018, the EU introduced the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) that offers EU citizens a shelter for their personal information by requesting companies to explain how people’s information is used clearly. To comply with the new law, European and non-European companies interacting with EU citizens undertook a massive data re-permission-request campaign. However, if on the one side the EU Regulator was particularly specific in defining the conditions to get customers’ data access, on the other side, it did not specify how the communication between firms and consumers should be designed. This has left firms free to develop their re-permission emails as they liked, plausibly coupling the informative nature of these privacy-related communications with other persuasive techniques to maximize data disclosure. Consequently, we took advantage of this colossal wave of simultaneous requests to provide insights into two issues. Firstly, we investigate how companies across industries and countries chose to frame their requests. Secondly, we investigate which are the factors that influenced the selection of alternative re-permission formats. In order to achieve these goals, we examine the content of a sample of 1506 re-permission emails sent by 1396 firms worldwide, and we identify the dominant “themes” characterizing these emails. We then relate these themes to both the expected benefits firms may derive from data usage and the possible risks they may experience from not being completely compliant to the spirit of the law. Our results show that: (1) most firms enriched their re-permission messages with persuasive arguments aiming at increasing consumers’ likelihood of relinquishing their data; (2) the use of persuasion is the outcome of a difficult tradeoff between costs and benefits; (3) most companies acted in their self-interest and “gamed the system”. Our results have important implications for policymakers, managers, and customers of the online sector.

Finanza Imprenditoriale: Teoria del Portafoglio e Costo del Capitale

This thesis focuses on the limits that may prevent an entrepreneur from maximizing her value, and the benefits of diversification in reducing her cost of capital. After reviewing all relevant literature dealing with the differences between traditional corporate finance and entrepreneurial finance, we focus on the biases occurring when traditional finance techniques are applied to the entrepreneurial context. In particular, using the portfolio theory framework, we determine the degree of under-diversification of entrepreneurs. Borrowing the methodology developed by Kerins et al. (2004), we test a model for the cost of capital according to the firms' industry and the entrepreneur's wealth commitment to the firm. This model takes three market inputs (standard deviation of market returns, expected return of the market, and risk-free rate), and two firm-specific inputs (standard deviation of the firm returns and correlation between firm and market returns) as parameters, and returns an appropriate cost of capital as an output. We determine the expected market return and the risk-free rate according to the huge literature on the market risk premium. As for the market return volatility, it is estimated considering a GARCH specification for the market index returns. Furthermore, we assume that the firm-specific inputs can be obtained considering new-listed firms similar in risk to the firm we are evaluating. After we form a database including all the data needed for our analysis, we perform an empirical investigation to understand how much of the firm's total risk depends on market risk, and which explanatory variables can explain it. Our results show that cost of capital declines as the level of entrepreneur's commitment decreases. Therefore, maximizing the value for the entrepreneur depends on the fraction of entrepreneur's wealth invested in the firm and the fraction she sells to outside investors. These results are interesting both for entrepreneurs and policy makers: the former can benefit from an unbiased model for their valuation; the latter can obtain some guidelines to overcome the recent financial market crisis.

Social aspects of organic agriculture and other multifunctional benefits - Successful EU models compared with possibilities for organic developments in Croatia

Main objective of the dissertation is to illustrate how social and educational aspects (in close interaction with other multifunctional aspects in organic agriculture) which are developed on different multifunctional organic farms in Italy and Netherlands, as well as established agricultural policy frameworks in these countries, can be compared with the situation in Croatian organics and can contribute to further developent of organic issues in the Repubic of Croatia. So, through different chapters, the dissertation describes the performance of organic agriculture sectors in Italy, Netherlands and Croatia within the national agricultural policy frameworks, it analyzes the role of national institutions and policy in Croatia in connection with Croatia's status of candidate country for enterance into EU and harmonization of legislation with the CAP, as well as analyzes what is the role of national authorities, universities, research centres, but also of private initiatives, NGOs and cooperatives in organic agriculture in Netherlands, Italy and Croatia. Its main part describes how social and educational aspects are interacting with other multifunctional aspects in organic agriculture and analyzes the benefits and contribution of multifunctional activites performed on organic farms to education, healthy nourishment, environment protection and health care. It also assess the strengths and weaknesses of organic agriculture in all researched countries. The dissertation concludes with development opportunities for multifunctional organic agriculture in Croatia, as well as giving perspectives and recommendations for different approaches on the basis of experiences learned from successful EU models accompanied with some personal ideas and proposals.

Modelli e strumenti di supporto alla scelta informata del paziente: un argine alla medicina difensiva

L’aumento esponenziale del contenzioso medico-legale – originatosi negli USA negli anni Sessanta in proporzioni tali da far parlare di medical liability crisis, e sviluppatosi in Italia a partire dalla metà degli anni Ottanta – ha comportato e continua a comportare, unitamente ad altre conseguenze negative, il ricorso sempre più frequente dei sanitari alle pratiche di medicina difensiva, con elevatissimi costi a carico del Servizio Sanitario Nazionale dovuti alla sovrabbondanza di trattamenti e ricoveri inutili e di procedure diagnostiche invasive non necessarie, peraltro produttive di stress emotivo nei pazienti. La causa dell’aumento della litigiosità deve essere ricercata in buona parte nella relazione medico-paziente, in particolar modo con riferimento al momento informativo che precede l’acquisizione del consenso informato al trattamento clinico. In Italia, i limiti che per lo più caratterizzano gli studi riguardanti il consenso informato derivano principalmente dal fatto che essi tendono a focalizzarsi unicamente sulla componente scritta del medesimo. Il fulcro del consenso informato, invece, deve ritenersi rappresentato da una comunicazione tra sanitario e paziente relativa ad un trattamento proposto ed alle possibili alternative, alla non sottoposizione ad alcun trattamento e ai rischi e benefici di ciascuna di queste opzioni. In un tale contesto il tema della comunicazione tra il professionista e la persona assistita sta suscitando interesse poiché ci si aspetta che esso conduca a miglioramenti degli outcome dei pazienti e alla diminuzione delle denunce da parte di questi ultimi per casi di responsabilità sanitaria. La maggiore attenzione al rapporto medico - paziente ha fatto emergere il bisogno di migliorare e potenziare le abilità comunicative dei medici, in un’ottica in cui il momento comunicativo possa essere percepito dal professionista come fulcro del rapporto medico-paziente, nella prospettiva di una elaborazione di strategie di prevenzione e contrasto ai fenomeni di medicina difensiva.

Cost-Effectiveness of Alternative Retrofit Options to Support Decision Making

How to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of repair/retrofit intervention vs. demolition/replacement and what level of shaking intensity can the chosen repairing/retrofit technique sustain are open questions affecting either the pre-earthquake prevention, the post-earthquake emergency and the reconstruction phases. The (mis)conception that the cost of retrofit interventions would increase linearly with the achieved seismic performance (%NBS) often discourages stakeholders to consider repair/retrofit options in a post-earthquake damage situation. Similarly, in a pre-earthquake phase, the minimum (by-law) level of %NBS might be targeted, leading in some cases to no-action. Furthermore, the performance measure enforcing owners to take action, the %NBS, is generally evaluated deterministically. Not directly reflecting epistemic and aleatory uncertainties, the assessment can result in misleading confidence on the expected performance. The present study aims at contributing to the delicate decision-making process of repair/retrofit vs. demolition/replacement, by developing a framework to assist stakeholders with the evaluation of the effects in terms of long-term losses and benefits of an increment in their initial investment (targeted retrofit level) and highlighting the uncertainties hidden behind a deterministic approach. For a pre-1970 case study building, different retrofit solutions are considered, targeting different levels of %NBS, and the actual probability of reaching Collapse when considering a suite of ground-motions is evaluated, providing a correlation between %NBS and Risk. Both a simplified and a probabilistic loss modelling are then undertaken to study the relationship between %NBS and expected direct and indirect losses.