Presentations - PhD students - EM - second year

8 February 2021
8 February 2021
Contatti: 
Doctoral School of Social Sciences
via Verdi 26, 38122 - Trento
Tel. 
+39 0461 283756 - 2290
Fax 
+39 0461 282335

Skype: school.socialsciences

9 AM - Zoom

Muhammad Junaid Shahid Hasni

The Health star label and Consumer choice behavior

Using nutritional labels in our daily shopping routine seems to turn into a progressively essential part of a decision. This work investigates the effect of the front of pack nutritional label on consumer decision making. Three studies are involved in achieving the study objectives. A review of the previous peer-reviewed academic works on health star labels will conduct and report the health star label's understanding in the first study. This study will use a systematic literature review (SLR) method. The second study will experimentally examine the impact of presenting an evaluative front of pack label, Health-star-label, on consumer choice behavior and consumer product perception. In this study, a series of experiments will measure the hypothetical choice of really existing products. The third study will follow the second study's output and look at the Health star rating effect on real choice behaviors in a natural shopping environment. It will measure the actual willingness to pay. The outcomes expect consumers to show more willingness to pay, trust in the brand, and an overall positive attitude towards a food product with a health star label presence. Results of these studies will contribute to the emerging and critical nutritional labels’ research stream.

Zilia Ismagilova

Deus ex machina: How can AI aid problem solving?

Overloaded information-rich environments, governed mostly by artificial engines, prevent humans to embrace the existing information, and consequently to make optimal decisions. Currently, very little research conducted on the impact of technology, specifically artificial intelligence (AI), on the human decision-making process and the impact of its application in behavior science.
In the current Ph.D. thesis, I plan to combine theoretical and empirical research.
Firstly, I plan to conduct an online experiment with a focus on Cognitive offloading in a risky environment with speed or accuracy conditions. The second part is planned to be a conceptual paper and focus on the topic concerning the question of AI technology’s ability to aid financial decision-making among different social groups. Finally, the last part is a combination of theoretical and empirical research and investigate how technologies, specifically AI, can aid in improving financial decision making for individuals with low socioeconomic status.
Understanding the synthesis and applications of environment-based and brain-based resources might help to create choice architecture that would aid human problem solvers to better recognize more optimal decision choices, provide solutions to business through optimizing business processes, help the government and policymakers to design strategies and assistance programs for a wide range of populations.

Quoc Thai Le

From central planning to a market economy: Trade liberalization, institutional reform and firms’ performance

There is no doubt that the performance and success of firms depends on a broad range of factors. This
research aims to provide further empirical evidence regarding how trade liberalization and institutions
shape firm performance under the transitional context of Vietnam. Composed of two main parts,
the research first empirically examines the effects of trade liberalization on firm growth and explores
whether these effects are heterogeneous either across firms or across the specific context in which they
compete with each other, and second investigates jointly trade liberalization and institutional reform
in Vietnam and their joint impact on firm performance, especially growth.
Keywords: Trade liberalization, Institutions, Firms’ performance, Vietnam
JEL: D22, F14, L25, O53, P31

Giorgio Lombardi

The potential impact of Brenner Basis Tunnel: from empirical simulation to a theoretical behavioral model

In 2028 the opening of a new railway passing through Brennero is planned, and it will directly connect Bolzano and Innsbruck. This will affect the local, regional, and national economies in several ways, which will be analyzed through applied models in the first phase of this survey. The model that will be applied is a new version of Krugman ’91, including commuting and amenities factors in the computation (Helpman, ’98). But the real aim of this research is to theorize a new model starting from the outputs of the first phase. The model will consider behavioral factors, especially nudging policies and default effect effects, and innovative mathematical techniques will be applied by using the Strange attractors geometrical model.
Making a comparison between the outputs of the simulation and the results of the several experiments performed during the research at CEE lab, it is possible to detect and quantify how behavioral biases affect the economy on different geographical levels (local, regional, and national), which have previously been aggregated with other empirical variables.
Through this analysis and with a more complex geometrical representation, it will be possible to detect in a more precise way all the variables and to make fair bases for proposing more efficient policies.