Dear colleagues, The Department of Economics cordially invites you to the WU Economic Research Seminar (Department Seminar) on Wednesday, March 27, with Hannes Ullrich (DIW Berlin) on "Battling Resistance: Using Machine Prediction to Improve Antibiotic Prescribing" Abstract: Machine learning methods are increasingly providing economists with opportunities to design welfare improving policies when prediction problems are at their core. The alarming increase in antibiotic resistance is one such opportunity. In this paper we evaluate how machine prediction can reduce wasteful overprescribing without diminishing health outcomes. Specifically, we train a machine learning algorithm on administrative data from Denmark to predict bacterial caused urinary tract infections. The benchmark against which machine prediction must be evaluated is whether it can improve upon human decision making. Contrasting existing machine learning papers tackling prediction centered policy problems, we observe labels, namely patient test outcomes, independent of physician prescription choices. This allows us to directly evaluate health outcomes of prescription redistribution rules based on machine prediction. We find that redistribution rules based on a combination of machine prediction and physician autonomy can lower the overall amount of prescribing by up to 10 percent without reducing the number of correctly treated bacterial urinary tract infections. As Denmark is one of most conservative countries in terms of antibiotic prescribing, this result is likely a lower bound of what can be achieved elsewhere. Time and place: Wednesday, March 27, 4.30 - 6.00 p.m., Campus WU, Welthandelsplatz 1, 1020 Vienna, building D4, entrance A, 2nd floor, Department meeting room 2.008. With best regards, Harald Oberhofer --- Univ.-Prof. Dr. Harald Oberhofer Institute for International Economics WU Vienna University of Economics and Business Phone: +43/1/31336-4984 Fax: +43/1/31336-4984 Email: harald.oberhofer@wu.ac.at<mailto:harald.oberhofer@wu.ac.at> Webpage: https://www.wu.ac.at/ie/mitarbeiter/harald-oberhofer/ Austrian Institute of Economic Research (WIFO) Phone: +43/1/7982601-468 Fax: +43/1/7989386 Email: harald.oberhofer@wifo.ac.at<mailto:harald.oberhofer@wifo.ac.at> Webpage: http://www.wifo.ac.at/harald_oberhofer