Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : DynamicInfoAsym (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Individuals, Markets and Organisations
Entité participante : Libera Università Internazionale degli Studi Sociali — Pays : Italie — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1136046.0 €

This proposal aims to advance our understanding of information transmission in dynamic markets by examining two specific scenarios: (i) information transmission by strategic agents and (ii) information transmission by algorithms. Its core focus revolves around the analysis of competition in dynamic markets with asymmetric information. The proposal encompasses both positive and normative analyses, offering insights into the ongoing discourse on predatory and algorithmic pricing. The project comprises three ambitious tasks: The first part develops a state-of-the-art theoretical workhorse model. Unlike the previous literature, it does not follow the “reputation” approach, which assumes the existence of a type committed to playing specific behavior. Instead, it adopts a fully strategic model, which, in turn, enables a thorough examination of the impact of policy and regulatory decisions on consumer welfare or market efficiency in a variety of markets since the equilibrium predictions do not depend on the endogenously specified behavioral types. The second part showcases the applications of the tools developed in Part 1 across different environments and how the resulting insights can inform policy debates on regulation. When applied to dynamic limit pricing, the model reveals a novel tradeoff: strategic delay. Entrants may opt to delay their entry decisions to gather more information about market conditions, which potentially could lead to a decrease in consumer welfare. This suggests that antitrust policies should also consider strategic delay, rather than solely focusing on the occurrence of entry when deciding whether limit pricing negatively affects consumers or not.  The final part of the project examines decisions made by algorithms rather than strategic agents and draws comparisons with Part 2. This part holds the potential to contribute significantly to the regulation of Artificial Intelligence, particularly within the framework of the EU AI Act.

Mots-clés : asymmetric information,dynamic games,signaling,oligopoly,algorithmic pricing,regulation,limit pricing
Projet ERC : Navigator (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Institutions, Governance and Legal Systems
Entité participante : Norwegian Institute of International Affairs — Pays : Norvège — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : NUPI
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1499970.0 €

Most policy fields in global governance have an abundance of country performance indicators (CPIs) and new CPIs proliferate apace. States are now measured and ranked on a dizzying array of cross-cutting metrics. Prima facie, the era of indicators promises a revolution: armed with ever improving data, policymakers can better allocate scarce resources to address global challenges. Yet, the era of indicators generates a problem and a paradox: while each individual CPI strives to simplify complexity, an abundance of CPIs on the same issue multiplies complexity and thus generates ambiguity. Moreover, while it would be reassuring if we could assume only the soundest CPIs would thrive, many high-profile CPIs remain in widespread use despite well-known shortcomings.Crucially, the paradox begets a major puzzle that prior research has yet to consider: How do private and public bodies navigate policy fields populated with multiple indicators, each portending to measure the same phenomenon? Although prior research provides firm grounds to hope that CPI users and producers improve their practices over time, no studies have investigated whether they do. Rendering this gap tractable, Navigator investigates the “marketplace of indicators” in four major policy fields: education, global governance, climate policy, and pandemic preparedness. Navigator’s novel framework—inspired by the classic liberal theory of the marketplace of ideas—enables the systemic, longitudinal analysis of how users’ and producers adapt their practices over time: Whether users learn in light of criticism of their favoured CPIs, how they discern when faced with a diversity of CPIs; and how producers compete for users within crowded policy fields. In this way, Navigator would push the frontier of CPI research by conducting a systematic problem shift: from investigating a single CPI’s influence or limitations, to examining how users and producers adapt in the face of growing CPI competition and CPI critique.

Mots-clés : the politics of evaluation
Projet ERC : CHAIN (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Individuals, Markets and Organisations
Entité participante : Université Bocconi — Pays : Italie — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1491649.0 €

This proposal consists of three interconnected projects that study how social networks shape the behavior of 1) scientists, 2) politicians, and 3) citizens by using the structure of networks for identification.  The first project investigates how social media networks shape knowledge production in academia. Through a comprehensive dataset of economists and their Twitter activity, the project provides insights into the information acquisition process of scientists and how scientists’ networks impact the direction of science. The project will examine the causal effect of social media usage on research output, collaboration, citation patterns, and careers. Moreover, the project will highlight inefficiencies in the scientific process that arise through scientific fads and herd behavior.  The second project will generate some of the first large-scale empirical analyses of the role of congressional staffers in the policy-making process. Based on comprehensive data on congressional staffers, their networks, and the activities of congress members, the project will generate pathbreaking insights into the impact of staffers on congressional voting behavior as well as policy priorities. The project will isolate the effect of staffers using a network-based identification strategy that leverages the educational ties of staffers. In this way, the research project will break new ground in the field of political economy by opening the black box of the policy-making process.  The third project focuses on the political effects of social media and the effectiveness of algorithmic interventions by investigating the impact of sharing limits on the social media platform WhatsApp. The project will analyze how this change to information flows on a network affects conflict events, believes, and election results in the world's largest democracy: India. The research project thereby addresses a gap in the field of social media research by shedding light on an often-proposed policy intervention

Mots-clés : networks,social media,politics,law making,science,algorithmic regulation,information flows,political staffers,protests,conflict
Projet ERC : EDIPO (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Individuals, Markets and Organisations
Entité participante : Université Bocconi — Pays : Italie — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1463212.5 €

The introduction of free and universal education, accessible to diverse religious and cultural groups, has been a major achievement worldwide and a crucial factor for economic development. However, still today, many countries do not guarantee full access to education, religious minorities often face restricted learning opportunities, and top educational institutions are being dismantled if they dissent from governments' policies. The over-arching goal of EDIPO is to study these extremely important phenomena through the lenses of quantitative economic history, focusing on France from the 1789 French Revolution to the 1900s. This was a period of educational reforms, key for French and, more broadly, for European modernization. The innovativeness of this proposal is twofold: (i) it constructs ground-breaking micro data from archival and secondary sources, of similar quality and detail of modern data, but for a longer time horizon; (ii) it identifies unique historical episodes to assess causality and to study the long-term effects. EDIPO is composed of three projects: Project 1 studies the process of expansion of mass education, from its demand to its consequences. Project 2 asks how discrimination affects schooling choices of religious minorities. Project 3 documents the impact of dismantling a high-quality but dissident educational institution on human capital, innovation, and political outcomes. EDIPO speaks to economists, economic historians, and political scientists. It sheds light on past and current instances of expansion and secularization of education, and it contributes to important public debates, e.g., the importance of achieving universal education; the increasing diversity of our society and the discrimination often faced by minority groups; and the dismantling of institutions training outstanding (but dissident) scholars.

Mots-clés : education,religiosity,xix century,france
Projet ERC : ANGEVA (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Mathematics
Entité participante : Université Bocconi — Pays : Italie — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1492700.0 €

The focus of this project is to advance the theory of anisotropic geometric variational problems. A vast literature is devoted to the study of critical points of the area functional, referred to as minimal surfaces. However, minimizing the surface area is often an idealization in physics. In order to account for preferred inhomogeneous and directionally dependent configurations and to capture microstructures, more general anisotropic energies are often utilized in several important models. Relevant examples include crystal structures, capillarity problems, gravitational fields and homogenization problems. Motivated by these applications, anisotropic energies have attracted an increasing interest in the geometric analysis community. Moreover in differential geometry they lead to the study of Finsler manifolds. Unlike the rich theory for the area functional, very little is understood in the anisotropic setting, as many of the essential techniques do not remain valid. This project aims to develop the tools to prove existence, regularity and uniqueness properties of the critical points of anisotropic functionals, referred to as anisotropic minimal surfaces. In order to show their existence in general Riemannian manifolds, it will be crucial to generalize the min-max theory. This theory plays a crucial role in proving a number of conjectures in geometry and topology. In order to determine the regularity of anisotropic minimal surfaces, I will study the associated geometric nonlinear elliptic partial differential equations (PDEs). Finally, in addition to the stationary configurations, this research will shed light on geometric flows, through the analysis of the related parabolic PDEs. The new methods developed in this project will provide new insights and results even for the isotropic theory: in solving the size minimization problem, in the vectorial Allen-Cahn approximation of the general codimension Brakke flow, and in the Almgren-Pitts min-max construction.

Mots-clés : geometric measure theory,geometric analysis,anisotropic energies
Projet ERC : FINDEV (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Individuals, Markets and Organisations
Entité participante : Université Bocconi — Pays : Italie — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1496312.5 €

This proposal consists of three empirical projects to advance our understanding on the specific conditions and frictions faced by financial institutions operating in low and middle-income countries. Understanding these aspects is crucial to elaborate policies of financial regulation and government intervention that promote structural transformation and development. 1. Ethnic Banking and Central Bank Independence. This project plans to study the political economy frictions behind financial regulation in Africa. Combining bank balance sheets and information on bank chief executive officers (CEOs), we will measure the ethnic connotation of banks and the co-ethnicity between CEOs and regulators. We will investigate the existence of ethnic favoritism in banking, the political use of financial regulation and the role of central bank independence in alleviating this friction. 2. Branch Organization, Multiculturalism and Conflict. Organizations decide their internal hierarchy considering the tradeoff between the use of knowledge and the internal frictions in communication and coordination. These frictions may be particularly high in the presence of a multicultural workforce and if conflict exacerbates within-organization differences. Building new data on hierarchy and management practices among Ethiopian bank branches and an experimental survey of lending discrimination, we plan to study the effect of conflict on the internal organization of banks, their hierarchy and effects on lending markets. 3. Market Incompleteness and Non-Performing Loans (NPLs). Structural transformation implies a move from low to high-productivity sectors. However, incomplete markets prevent banks from selling loans from low-productivity sectors and instead oblige banks to hold NPLs, depressing the financing of structural transformation. This project plans to study the introduction of the first Asset Management Companies focusing on NPL in China, with heterogeneous presence across firms and cities.

Mots-clés : development economics,financial economics,political economy
Projet ERC : SOFIA (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Individuals, Markets and Organisations
Entité participante : Université Bocconi — Pays : Italie — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1499875.0 €

Stereotypes are often at the origin of biased behaviour and can contribute to the widening of socioeconomic inequalities in diverse societies. This is especially true in the schooling context, where both teachers and students may hold negative stereotypes towards certain groups. The overarching goal of this proposal is to study the formation of stereotypes and test policies designed to mitigate educational inequalities, building on insights from behavioural economics and causal machine learning techniques.  The proposed research combines several innovative aspects: (i) cutting edge datasets merging administrative data with newly collected surveys, including psychological measures and incentivized experiments (ii) quasi-natural experiments to shed light on the determinants of stereotypes and biased behaviour, and (iii) randomized controlled trials to test scalable and cost-effective policies.  SOFIA is composed of three workpackages (WP), focusing respectively on evidence from Italy, Finland, and Chile. WP1 provides innovative evidence on the role of selective memory in the formation of gender stereotypes for adolescents and teachers (Project A), and evidence on how causal machine learning techniques can be used to mitigate inequalities (Project B). WP2 focuses on the implications of exposure to immigrants on the development of stereotypes and inter-ethnic relationships (Project C) and on how to improve social cohesion through innovative interventions that exploit behavioural insights (Project D). WP3 investigates the role of self-stereotypes in explaining limited access to opportunities in education (Project E).  The proposal speaks to the policy debate on how to effectively mitigate discrimination to foster educational achievements of disadvantaged or underrepresented groups. It is my hope that the combination of innovative solutions inspired by behavioural insights and solid evidence generated through credible empirical strategies will help inform this debate

Mots-clés : education,stereotypes,gender,immigration,social class,social interaction
Projet ERC : PicoBody (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Biotechnology and Biosystems E ngineering
Entité participante : Université technique de Munich — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1493750.0 €

Antimicrobial resistance is a burning global issue. The available antimicrobials are losing efficacy as resistant bacteria arise, but the industry does not invest enough into antibiotic discovery due to low expected revenues. Natural antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) hold great promise as blueprints for new antibiotics. However, there are few known natural AMPs with sufficiently high potency and low toxicity that enable applications in veterinary and human medicine. As a result, the research on natural peptide antibiotics has been obstructed. New natural AMPs are needed urgently. I propose for the first time that picobodies, recently discovered peptides part of natural cow antibodies, have potent antibacterial activity. In contrast to known mammalian AMPs, picobodies are exceptionally diverse due to the unique bovine immune system. Moreover, all picobodies contain disulfide bonds that enable a redox regulation of their activity (unlike common antibiotics). I suggest that redox-activated picobodies target bacteria in infection sites characterized by a reducing environment such as persistent bacterial biofilms. In PicoBody, I have 4 major objectives: (i) interrogate natural picobody repertoires for antibacterial activity, (ii) investigate if cows can develop antibacterial picobodies against essential bacterial targets, (iii) understand how the redox environment regulates the antibacterial picobody activity, and (iv) evaluate the activity of antibacterial picobodies using in vitro and in vivo models. To achieve my goals, I will employ a multidisciplinary approach based on protein science, molecular biology, microbiology, machine learning, and lab automation. The project will establish key methods for the identification of antibacterial proteins, reveal basic insights about the fascinating bovine immune system, validate picobodies as previously unknown natural AMPs and open new research directions into the discovery of very much needed new peptide antibiotics.

Mots-clés : bovine antibodies antibacterial peptides picobodies antibodies ultra long cdrs
Projet ERC : ROBOFLUID (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Systems and Communication Engineering
Entité participante : École polytechnique de Bari — Pays : Italie — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1498750.0 €

Fluid circulation is ubiquitous in both living creatures and machines, and it serves multiple functions: temperature regulation, transport of nutrients, mechanical actuation. A beating heart is a soft pump that keeps animal alive through blood circulation.  ROBOFLUID will merge fluids capabilities with electrical control to equip robots and wearables with the superpowers of fluids. By untangling the interaction between intense electric fields and fluid mechanics, ROBOFLUID will develop a new class of solid-state fluidic devices where flow is directly driven in situ by electrical signals, and where fluid velocity, pressure and temperature are used to sense the device status and the environment.  The large number of components required to operate conventional fluidics (pumps, valves, tubing, plugs), have prevented its use in untethered systems. ROBOFLUID will overcome this limitation by means of solid-state pumps where fluids are directly accelerated by electric fields. Similarly, to robotic hearts, robotic fluids will drive (1) new strong and robust artificial muscles, (2) wearable coolers and (3) active textiles for movement support and haptics.  ROBOFLUID will leverage our experience with soft robotics, electroactive materials and solid-state pumping based on Electrohydrodynamics (EHD). By bringing these fields together and bridging them with emerging active fibers technologies for wearables, we aim to create new scientific understanding of fluid mechanics and field emission in liquids under high electric fields and to create new ground-breaking functionalities for robots and wearables. We will create (1) robust, high-power-density fluidic muscles that will make low-cost dexterous robotic hands possible, (2) wearable coolers to reduce energy consumption from air conditioning and to protect fragile people during extreme heat waves, (3) textile artificial muscles to facilitate daily actions in the elderly and to enable remote physical interactions.

Mots-clés : soft robotics,artificial muscles,robotic materials,wearable robots,smart textiles
Projet ERC : LaserCell (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Materials Engineering
Entité participante : Université technique de Munich — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1499969.0 €

LaserCell envisions an innovative approach to reshape and rearrange cellulose at the molecular level by disrupting cohesive interactions through resonant excitation of specific bonds. It will revolutionize the field of biopolymer processing beyond cellulose and yield fundamental insights into supramolecular structure and dynamics in biomaterials. Although cellulose is biodegradable and mechanically strong, it cannot be processed by conventional thermoplastic polymer methods, which limits its use as high-volume material. Cellulose decomposes before it melts because of cooperative intermolecular hydrogen bonding and hydrophobic interactions. To plasticise cellulose, I propose to disrupt these intermolecular bonds with photon energy delivered by infrared (IR) laser pulses. Employing wavelengths matching specific vibrational modes, the photon energy will be resonantly absorbed, thus effectively plasticising cellulose. I envision that the rapid energy dissipation in short pulses will deliver enough peak power to disrupt the intermolecular bonds yet avoiding thermal damage. I plan to systematically investigate how laser parameters influence the supramolecular structure of cellulose and establish analytical tools to characterize its structural transitions under mechanical load. Additionally, to allow processability in different set-ups, I aim to prolong the time window of plasticization and adjust the flowability, by using the laser irradiation in synergy with the hydrogen disrupting molecules. As a proof of concept, I will implement this novel photo-plasticization technique into a cellulose fibre spinning process and post-treatment to modulate the cellulose fibre crystallinity. I have worked for 10 years on cellulose-based materials and have a strong background in fibre spinning and material science. My research group will engage 1 PhD student and 2 Postdocs with background in polymer science and laser physics and technology.

Mots-clés : cellulose,biopolymer processing,thermoplastic,fiber spinning