Erasmus School of Economics secures second place in World Championship in Econometrics

Koobs, Van Meer, Bemelmans and Kers competed against 29 teams of other top universities, which included Harvard, Oxford and Cambridge University in April. The victory went to the team of Lund University, the third place was for the team of University of Antwerp.

The Econometric Game is yearly hosted by the University of Amsterdam. During two intense and exhilarating competition days, the brightest minds in econometrics converge to tackle complex case studies. Top universities send delegations of four students, including a maximum of two PhD candidates, to showcase their econometric prowess. The teams are given a case study, which they must solve in two days. After these two days the ten teams with the best solutions continue to day three. On the third day the finalists try to solve a second case. The World Championship in Econometrics is concluded with the finalists presenting their solutions to all participants and the jury. 

The case from this year was on 'Causal Effects in Education', requiring participants to study causal effects of educational policies using the well-known PISA database which was also recently highlighted in the Dutch news. During the initial two days, participants had to examine the effect of school-starting-age on later educational outcomes. For the final, participants were tasked with creatively exploring any causal effect of their choice. 

The team of Erasmus School of Economics employed state-of-the-art econometric techniques in combination with machine learning methods to tackle these questions. Sam van Meer and Stan Koobs applied their research expertise to develop and implement the methodology whereas Cil Bemelmans and Tobias Kers concentrated on extensive coding and writing.