On Friday 8 June 2018 Victor Hoornweg will defend his PhD thesis entitled 'A Tradeoff in Econometrics'. Supervisors are Professors Philip Hans Franses and Richard Paap.
About Victor Hoornweg
Victor Hoornweg (1985) obtained a Liberal Arts & Sciences degree (cum laude) at University College Utrecht, a Master’s degree in Econometrics (cum laude) at Erasmus University Rotterdam, and a Master’s degree in Philosophy (cum laude) at Utrecht University. He presented his research at international conferences and he helped initiate and organize an annual conference for PhD students at the Econometric Institute. Aside from his PhD in Econometrics, he does research in Philosophy and runs a non-profit tutoring organization.
Thesis abstract
The scientific method dictates how researchers can make claims about the underlying truth by confronting prior hypotheses to a random sample of data. A fundamental task of Statistics is to allow researchers to balance their hypotheses with data-optimized results. This thesis shows that current statistical approaches make it difficult to control such a tradeoff and proposes an intuitive alternative.
In the process, it will be explained how the famous coefficient of determination R2 can be unpacked, so that the individual relevance of deviating from each hypothesis can be quantified. Next to presenting novel techniques for estimating and selecting parameters of the linear regression model, a convenient tradeoff is defined for weighing observations and for the search of an optimal configuration.
Time and location
The PhD defence will take place in the Senate Hall of Erasmus University Rotterdam and will start at 9.30 hrs.
- More information
For more information about this ceremony, please contact Ronald de Groot, Communication Officer of Erasmus School of Economics phone +31 10 408 1762 or by email: rdegroot@ese.eur.nl.