Events

Privacy-Seeking Behavior in the Personal Data Market
Speaker: Joy Wu (ISTO)

Firms are looking to commercialize, trade, and monetize the personal data they collect and receive from consumers. Internet users regularly choose to disclose and share their personal data in return for goods and services. This study examines whether a data recipient's ability to exploit data in a secondary market can motivate users' privacy behavior. An online experiment elicited individuals' willingness and reservation prices for sharing their personally-identifiable psychometric data when faced with real privacy consequences. I found that individuals' information disclosure behaviors were misaligned with their willingness to allow data recipients to monetize their data and trade with a third party. Individuals behaved more privately — by refusing to share data or by demanding greater benefits in exchange for privacy losses — when they became more aware of a data recipient's ability to sell their data for money. Moreover, when individuals considered allowing access to and exposing their data to many recipients, the privacy responses were weaker than the responses to  just one recipient's exploitation abilities.

Performance-related CEO Dismissal and Innovation Performance
Speaker: Ali Samei (TUM)

Among different types of CEO turnovers, performance-related CEO dismissals are usually a response to the request by unhappy shareholders to turn around a troubled firm. This may have negative long-term consequences for firms if the pressure to deliver short-term returns disincentivizes newly appointed CEOs from pursuing relatively risky and uncertain, but important, long-term growth strategies. In this study, using a sample of CEO turnover events among S&P 1500 firms over 18 years, we find that (only) performance-related CEO dismissals have a long-lasting negative effect on the amount of innovation a firm produces starting from the year immediately following a dismissal. Our results also show that the higher percentage of informed institutional investors, higher voting power of board directors, and the existence of a family relative of the CEO among the board of directors, will reverse or weaken the negative effect of performance-related CEO dismissal on innovation. We provide several robustness tests to rule out alternative explanations. The paper thus provides important insights into the potential negative long-term consequences of the CEO dismissals for firms and how these consequences can be mitigated.

Gender Bias in Remote Service Delivery – Evidence from Healthcare

The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in a massive shift to the remote delivery of services. In this paper, we examine if the gender of the service provider moderates this transition. Specifically, we utilize data on in-person and virtual primary healthcare to study if the gender of the physician affects the shift to virtual healthcare. We find that female physicians experienced a 5.7% larger reduction in the delivery of services via conventional methods during the pandemic. Although female providers delivered a greater extent of their services digitally (2.2%), they suffered a net decrease in the services they provided (3.4%). For female physicians, the likelihood of having a child in the household was correlated with the amount of virtual services provided. However, correlations between being a parent and digital delivery of service were absent for male physicians.  Relative to their male colleagues, female healthcare providers with lower autonomy (such as nurse practitioners and physician assistants) did not use a significantly higher amount of telemedicine. Their digital service provision was also uncorrelated with being a parent. Finally, women’s presence in firms increased remote service delivery – physicians of both genders in majority-female clinics provided significantly more telemedicine. Overall, female physicians experienced a 2.36 percentage point lower reimbursement relative to male physicians during the initial period of the COVID-19 pandemic. These results underscore the gendered difference of the shift to remote services, implications for mothers, low autonomy workers, and institutions.

Does Telemedicine Transcend Disparities or Create a Digital Divide? Evidence from the COVID-19 Pandemic

We examine telemedicine utilization during the COVID-19 pandemic. Advocates have argued that telemedicine can overcome barriers in accessing healthcare and protect patients from contracting COVID-19. Rural and poor patients, for example, would not need to make expensive and time-consuming trips to healthcare facilitates when using telemedicine. Conversely, telemedicine adoption may depend on broadband access and technology skills, which could create a digital divide and exacerbate disparities. We study these questions using data on virtual and conventional care from a large commercial insurer. Telemedicine utilization soared during the pandemic. We further find that telemedicine utilization was concentrated in urban and affluent markets. We attribute this to two factors. First, telemedicine use was correlated with broadband penetration. Second, telemedicine adoption was much higher for patients with an established healthcare provider relationship (i.e., received care in the same health system in the previous year). We also find that telemedicine utilization was lower among older patients and comorbidities; cohorts with the greatest risk of severe illness and death from COVID-19. Without further intervention, telemedicine could exacerbate existing health care disparities.

Contact Person: Lucy Xiaolu Wang

The conference programme can be found here.

In case you have any questions, please contact the Alumni Office at the MPI alumni(at)ip.mpg.de.

This event will be held in German.

Die Impfung ist derzeit der Königsweg aus der weltweiten Corona-Pandemie. Doch wie kann mehr Impfstoff möglichst rasch produziert und global verteilt werden? In der aktuellen Debatte trifft die Forderung nach Aussetzung des Patentschutzes für Covid-19-Impfstoffe auf Bedenken, dass dies notwendige Innovation langfristig verhindern könnte. Das Forum bringt die Standpunkte zusammen und fragt nach. Wie gelangen wir zu mehr globaler Gerechtigkeit in der Bekämpfung der Pandemie und sichern zugleich den Rahmen für Innovationen in der Arzneimittelforschung? Was bedeutet das in der Praxis?
 

In den Industrieländern geben sinkende Infektionszahlen und ein steigender Anteil geimpfter Menschen Anlass zu hoffen, dass Covid-19 bald überwunden sein könnte. Doch um die Pandemie langfristig zu besiegen und die Bildung von Mutationen einzudämmen, sollte der größte Teil der Weltbevölkerung möglichst rasch geimpft werden. Bislang haben Menschen in den ärmsten Ländern das größte Risiko an der Infektion zu sterben und die geringste Aussicht auf eine baldige Impfung.

Die Frage, wie mehr Impfstoff produziert und gerecht verteilt werden kann, wird derzeit heftig debattiert. Den Kern bildet die Forderung, den Patentschutz auf Corona-Impfstoffe auszusetzen. Doch führt dieser Weg wirklich zum Ziel oder bremst er notwendige Weiterentwicklungen? Das Forum erörtert die bisherigen Regelungen durch das internationale Patentrecht und fragt welche anderen Wege es geben kann, um rascher möglichst viel Menschen mit mehr Impfstoff zu versorgen.

Welche rechtlichen Regeln gelten für die Nutzung der von mRNA- und Vektor-Impfstoffen? Welche Verfahren, Abläufe und Inhaltsstoffe braucht es, um sie zu produzieren und zu verteilen und was sind die größten Hürden? Welche benötigen wir in Zukunft? Welche Folgen hätte die Aussetzung des Patentrechts als Eingriff des Staates in den Markt aktuell und auf lange Sicht, und was sollte getan werden, um Menschen in armen Ländern zu helfen?

 

Es diskutieren:

Prof. Dr. Reto Hilty, Max-Planck-Institut für Innovation und Wettbewerb, München
Als Experte für internationales Patentrecht warnt er vor einer Aushebelung des Patenschutzes in einem aktuellen Positionspapier.

Elisabeth Massute, Ärzte ohne Grenzen
Mit der Medikamentenkampagne setzt sich Ärzte ohne Grenzen für den Zugang zu bezahlbaren Medikamenten, Impfstoffen und Diagnostika für Menschen in ärmeren Ländern ein. In diesem Rahmen fordert Ärzte ohne Grenzen u.a. die Aussetzung des Patentschutzes für Covid-19-Technologien und schnelle Transfers der nötigen Technologien und des Know-how an geeignete Hersteller für eine Ausweitung der Produktion weltweit.

Prof. Dr. Stefan Kaufmann, Max-Planck-Institut für Infektionsbiologie, Berlin
Als emeritierter Direktor am MPI für Infektionsbiologie forscht Kaufmann seit Jahren über Infektionskrankheiten und ihre Bekämpfung und hat einen Impfstoff gegen Tuberkulose entwickelt, der nun in mehreren Phase III Studien auf Wirksamkeit getestet wird. Er kennt das Problem der Gesundheitsvorsorge in armen Ländern auch aus der Praxis.

Prof. Dr. Jochen Maas, Sanofi-Aventis Deutschland GmbH, Frankfurt-Hoechst
Jochen Maas leitet den deutschen Standort der globalen Forschung und Entwicklung bei einem der wichtigsten Pharmaunternehmen weltweit, das zwei Corona-Impfstoffmodalitäten – einen proteinbasierten und einen mRNA-Impfstoff - entwickelt. Der Impfstoff auf Proteinbasis befindet sich derzeit in der letzten klinischen Testphase und soll bei positivem Ausgang noch in diesem Jahr verfügbar sein. 

Moderation: Volkart Wildermuth, Wissenschaftsjournalist

Youtube video of the discussion from the Harnack House in Berlin.

When publishers sell impressions, advertisers cannot target viewers without information from the publisher.  By withholding information from advertisers (or limiting their ability to make contingent bids), the publisher can pool impressions for a given advertiser.  Pooling impressions increases market thickness but reduces efficiency.  We show that it is optimal for the publisher to pool high value impressions, in order to maintain market competition, but separate low value impressions, to maintain efficiency. (Joint work with Stephen Morris, MIT, and Tibor Heumann, PUC Chile)

Contact Person: Marina Chugunova

Innovation under regulatory uncertainty and the role of expectations: Evidence from the U.S. drone market
Presenter: Virginia Herbst (TUM)
Discussant: Lucy Xialou Wang (Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition)

There and back again: Disruptive transitions in dyadic role relationships
Presenter: Maren Mickeler (LMU ISTO)
Discussant: Daniel Obermeier (TUM)

There is a well-documented gap in the observed number of scientific works produced by male and female scientists. We first document that the gender gap in observed scientific productivity may be in part explained by a gender gap in the attribution of scientific credit. We find that women are approximately half as likely to be named on any given patent or publication produced by their team as their male counterparts, and women are twice as likely to be left off the coauthor list of the most cited scientific works produced by their team, relative to the papers that receive no citations. The gender gap in attribution is found across scientific fields and career stage. We then investigate some possible explanations for the gender gap in scientific credit.

Contact person: Cristina Rujan

We are facing what some have described as a period of the most radical exponential change in human history. The overlapping emergence of new technologies, including the Internet of Things and Artificial Intelligence, point towards a disturbing scenario in which many of our well established certainties are broken into millions of pieces. Intellectual property is not immune to these challenges. As a tool to encourage innovation and competition in the marketplace, any intellectual property system should be aligned with the development of big-data, AI, and other hybridization technologies. But an intellectual property system also must contribute to sustainable development goals.

The course will examine in a holistic manner the impact emerging technologies and new hybrid technologies may have on intellectual property systems

9 June 2021
The first day will focus on the context of society and markets in which technological disruptions occur and will identify the main challenges of data-driven technologies to innovation and competition.

10 June 2021
The second day will look at the legal and policy challenges, rolling out the two cases (IoT and AI) across the IP landscape.

Participants are encouraged to think beforehand of one example about what they may consider an innovation in their field of expertise that has been motivated by the use of IoT or AI technologies.

In-person if possible or hybrid format.

Webpage of Begoña Gonzalez Otero

Abstract follows soon.

Contact Person: Lucy Xiaolu Wang