This programme encompasses the research of the Econometric Institute. The programme has two main research themes: Econometrics and Management Science. The aim of the Econometrics and Management Science programme is to advance methodological knowledge related to econometrics, statistics, data science, transportation and operations research.
Mission
It is our mission to help to tackle societal, economic and business-oriented challenges that require complex data analysis and/or optimisation. We aim to be internationally recognised as one of the best places to study econometrics and to do research in this area. At the same time, we aim to have our methods used by other academics and in industry.
Programme leaders
Research areas
Under the “Econometrics” theme, we focus on data-driven research using advanced statistical methods and techniques. This research pushes the state of the art in econometrics, data science and machine learning, to provide economic agents, including policymakers, firms and investors, with quantitative support to make the best possible decisions.
European forefront of the developments in transportation, logistics and supply chain management
In the Management Science theme, we are at the European forefront of the developments in transportation, logistics and supply chain management in interaction with stakeholders. The intention is to address major societal issues in these areas, like sustainability, digitalisation, and mobility.
Research quality
Our research output over the years 2015-2021 has increased significantly. The number of publications in top journals has been higher every year since 2015. Not only has the quantity increased but also the quality of the publications.
Grants
Several individual grants proposals were submitted by the research programme, and we have been successful in obtaining the following grants:
- NWO Veni grant (Krzysztof Postek, 2019),
- NWO Veni (Wan, 2021)
- NWO Vidi (Andreas Alfons, 2019)
- Marie Sklodowska Curie Individual Fellowship grant (Andrea Naghi)
- Two Erasmus University fellowships (Remy Spliet and Wendun Wang 2016).
Next to that external financing for several projects was realised:
- ProseloNext (Sept 2016 – Dec 2019, Rommert Dekker)
- NWO project “Improving Resilience” (Sept 2017 – Aug 2021, Huisman)
- TNO smart data (Jan 2017 – Dec 2018, Rommert Dekker)
- NWO “Duurzame logistiek” (June 2016 – Aug 2018, Dekker and March 2015 – Sept 2020, Remy Spliet and Albert Wagelmans)
- NWO “Sustainable living labs”( 2019- 2022, Remy Spliet),
- SMARTPORT Ultra Large Container Ships (Rommert Dekker)
- REI proposal (Patrick Groenen)
- Open Mind Call 2021 Health and Technology (Andreas Alfons and Max Welz)
- NWO Accelerator (2020, Shadi Sharif Azadeh), TKI Dinalog physical Internet Travel Grant (Shadi Sharif Azadeh)
- NETSPAR (2018-2020, Robin Lumsdaine).
In 2021 Didier Nibbering was awarded the Christiaan Huygens prize for the best PhD thesis in Econometrics in the last five year written at a Dutch university. Prizes for best papers were obtained by Harwin de Vries, Thomas Breugem, Rowan Hoogervorst and Rolf van Lieshout (Health, Railway INFORMS PhD student paper competitions), Rommert Dekker (Best paper in IISE Transactions) and Qing Chuan Ye, Yingqjan Zhang and Rommert Dekker (Best paper in Omega). Shadi Sharif Azadeh won the INFORMS Early Career Award in 2017. She also won an INFORMS best paper award in 2019. Several Staff members were also involved in (inter)national science review boards (ERC, NWO Veni, NWO Vici, NWO Open Competition, TKI Dinalog).
Events
The Econometric Institute hosted several international conferences including the 2021 Annual Conference of the International Association for Applied Econometrics, the 2019 European Winter Meeting of the Econometric Society. To help international PhD students present their job market paper, in 2019 the 1st Annual International Econometrics PhD Conference was initiated by the programme. It is the idea to organise this event every year but due to COVID-19 later conferences were cancelled.
Software
With respect to software, the R packages on GitHub from Andreas Alfons have been downloaded extensively.
Relevance to society
The research conducted in the programme has a strong societal relevance. For example, the joint research with NS railways was demonstrated in many PhD and student projects. The performance of NS railways, e.g. visible in punctuality and customer satisfaction figures, has increased over the years, partly because of this joint research.
Projects
Besides this, several consultancy projects were done through the EQI which were follow ups of our research on forecasting and inventory control. Also advisory tasks were undertaken at the ACM and Dutch Customs (Dennis Fok). Next, we have cooperated with NGOs in two PhD projects (Harwin de Vries & Lisanne van Rijn). Finally, several companies were involved in joint research projects: Ahold, Municipality of Rotterdam (Remy Spliet), Coolblue (Richard Paap and Dennis Fok), and Fokker Services, ECT, Port of Rotterdam, ASML, IBM, Thales, Stork- Marel (Rommert Dekker).
MOOC
In 2015 the research programme launched a MOOC entitled Econometrics: Methods and Applications on the COURSERA platform. We continue to support this MOOC and the number of learners and completers is still increasing. A second MOOC, which can be seen as an introduction course for the first one, called Enjoyable Econometrics, was launched in 2019 and attracted about many learners.