Year: 2023
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Modelling of school choice and school segregation: data-driven agent-based models
Agent-Based Models (ABMs) are increasingly being used to model interactions and dynamics within social systems. Consequently, they are also considered to be a very suitable tool for studying the dynamics of school choice and school segregation. However, empirically calibrated ABMs have received limited attention in this field. Mostly due to computational challenges (it is often…
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Modelling life outcomes trought foundational machine learning models
The project focused on a question of how well can we determine ex ante individuals’ life outcomes? Traditional low dimensional models employed in the social sciences prove of limited effectiveness when given such objective. We seek to improve the performance of such models by applying modern machine learning methods on CBS microdata. Neural network models…
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Modelling life outcomes through foundational machine learning Models
The project focused on a question of how well can we determine ex ante individuals’ life outcomes? Traditional low dimensional models employed in the social sciences prove of limited effectiveness when given such objective. We seek to improve the performance of such models by applying modern machine learning methods on CBS microdata. Neural network models…
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Country-Wide Agent-Based Epidemiological Modeling Using 17 Million Individual-Level Microdata
Calibration is a crucial step in developing agent-based models. Agent-based models are notorious for being difficult to calibrate as they can express various degrees of freedom when model parameters are unknown. Models that appear correctly calibrated to match macro-level observed data perform poorly when micro-level insights need to be inferred. As a result, policymakers cannot…
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Pregnancy loss following an in-utero exposure to job loss: Evidence from Netherlands
Pregnancy loss is a public health matter affecting 11 to 21% of clinically detected pregnancies in high-income countries. Along with biological and lifestyle factors, psycho-social sources of stress such as natural disasters, economic downturns and financial instability may put pregnancies at risk. While an exposure to job loss during the gestation might be linked to…
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The Societal Benefits and Costs of Paid Paternity Leave: Employer, Worker, and Family Responses
While the economic position of women has improved substantially over the last century, gender inequality remains large in all countries. To further close the gender gap, governments are increasingly incentivizing fathers to take leave from work and spend more time on childcare. Such policies aim to create a more level playing field with mothers in…
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Childcare, mental health and education – Evidence from childcare subsidy changes in the Netherlands
In this project we investigate the impact of subsidized childcare on children’s mental health and cognitive development in the Netherlands. Utilizing different administrative data sources, we combine a reduced form approach and a structural dynamic model of child development to improve our understanding of how mental health and cognitive development interact throughout childhood and at…
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Social Networks as Change Agents for Equal Career Opportunities of Dutch PhDs?
To what extent and why are some groups more likely to continue their careers outside academia? If PhDs transition into the labor market, how could we explain gender and ethnicity-based differentials in where they end up (e.g., public versus private sector)? What determines inequality in success in academia (e.g., grants) and outside academia (e.g., income)?…
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The impacts of adopting new technology: firm- and worker-level evidence
Advancing technologies are increasingly able to automate tasks and even jobs. This raises concerns that new technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and robotics will displace workers and lead to increasing inequality. In this project, we exploit a survey on the use of new technologies by firms over the last three decades. This rarely used…
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Healthy diversity: do more female managers reduce the likelihood of mental-health related long-term sickness absence among employees?
Despite ongoing discussions about the benefits of women in the leadership of work organisations, there exists little quantifiable evidence to what degree female managers’ presence benefits workers’ well-being. We employ an innovative study design using linked employer-employee longitudinal microdata that overcomes major limitations of surveys in studying work & health (e.g. selection, response, and social…