Fabrizio Dell’Acqua

I am a postdoctoral research fellow and teaching fellow at Harvard Business School and the Laboratory for Innovation Science at Harvard (LISH). I received my Ph.D. in Management from Columbia Business School.

My research focuses on the areas of automation, human/AI collaboration, and business ethics. In my dissertation work, I study the growing algorithmic transformation of work from an organizational perspective.

Most recently, I have studied how organizations can enjoy the benefits of AI and ensure that human collaborators remain engaged in their activities.

My research has been funded by the Kauffman Foundation, the NBER Innovation Policy grant, and Columbia’s Richman Center, among others.

I am on the Steering Committee of the Generative AI Working Group at the Digital, Data, and Design Institute at Harvard.

Prior to my PhD at Columbia, I co-founded multiple tech ventures and led their strategic and data science operations. I keep being involved in the tech startup space. I received degrees in economics from Bocconi University and London Business School.

Research

Publications

The Managerial Effects of Algorithmic Fairness Activism, American Economic Association Papers and Proceedings, May 2020 (with Bo Cowgill and Sandra Matz)

Super Mario meets AI: Experimental Effects of Automation and Skills on Team Performance and Coordination, Forthcoming at the Review of Economics and Statistics (with Bruce Kogut and Patryk Perkowski)

Working Papers

Falling Asleep at the Wheel: Human/AI Collaboration in a Field Experiment on HR recruiters

Biased Programmers? Or Biased Data? A Field Experiment in Operationalizing AI Ethics (with Bo Cowgill, Samuel Deng, Nakul Verma, Daniel Hsu, and Augustin Chaintreau)

Abstract in the Proceedings of the Twenty-First ACM Conference on Economics and Computation, 2020 →

• Finalist, Wharton People Analytics Conference, Research Paper Competition.

• NBER Innovation Policy small grant ($20,000).

• Richard Paul Richman Center Research Grant ($20,000).

When to Talk Politics in Business: Experimental Evidence of Responses to CEO Political Activism (with Tommaso Bondi and Vanessa Burbano)

• Revise and Resubmit, Strategic Management Journal.

Framing Algorithmic Fairness: How Fatalistic versus Counterfactual Rhetoric Influences the Adoption of Predictive Algorithms (with Bo Cowgill and Sandra Matz)

Work in Progress

Skills vs. Credentials in Education: Evidence from a Field Experiment in AI Ethics (with Bo Cowgill and Augustin Chaintreau)

Leveraging Entrepreneurship to Empower Refugees: Evidence from a RCT (with Andrea Contigiani, Arati Maleku, and Sehun Oh)

• Kauffman Foundation's Knowledge Challenge Award ($120,000).

• Tamer Center for Social Enterprise Research Grant ($5,000).