The economics of platform liability.

Public authorities in many jurisdictions are concerned about the proliferation of illegal content and products on online platforms. One often discussed solution is to make the platform liable for third parties' misconduct. In this paper, we first identify platform incentives to stop online misconduct in the absence of liability. Then, we provide an economic appraisal of platform liability that highlights the intended and unintended effects of a more stringent liability rule on several key variables such as prices, terms and conditions, business models, and investments. Specifically, we discuss the impact of the liability regime applying to online platforms on competition between them and the incentives of third parties relying on them. Finally, we analyze the potential costs and benefits of measures that have received much attention in recent policy discussions.

Do-It-Yourself medicine? The impact of light cannabis liberalization on prescription drugs.

Governments worldwide are increasingly concerned about the booming use of CBD (cannabidiol) products. However, we know little about the impact of their liberalization. We study a unique case of unintended liberalization of a CBD-based product (light cannabis) that occurred in Italy in 2017. Using unique and high-frequency data on prescription drug sales and by exploiting the staggered local availability of the new product in each Italian province, we document a significant substitution effect between light cannabis and anxiolytics, sedatives, opioids, anti-depressants and anti-psychotics. Results are informative for regulators and suggest that bans on light cannabis use would disregard the needs of patients to seek effective reliefs of their symptoms.

Vaccine hesitancy and (fake) news: Quasi-experimental evidence from Italy.

The spread of fake news and misinformation on social media is blamed as a primary cause of vaccine hesitancy, which is one of the major threats to global health, according to the World Health Organization. This paper studies the effect of the diffusion of misinformation on immunization rates in Italy by exploiting a quasi-experiment that occurred in 2012, when the Court of Rimini officially recognized a causal link between the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine and autism and awarded injury compensation. To this end, we exploit the virality of misinformation following the 2012 Italian court's ruling, along with the intensity of exposure to nontraditional media driven by regional infrastructural differences in Internet broadband coverage. Using a Difference-in-Differences regression on regional panel data, we show that the spread of this news resulted in a decrease in child immunization rates for all types of vaccines.