Eva Janssens, Frank Kleibergen
Research Master student Eva Janssens has been awarded a three-year NWO Research Talent grant to fund a PhD project on "Estimation and Identification of Parameters in Macroeconomic Models with Incomplete Markets". The project will be supervised by research fellows Frank Kleibergen and Christian Stoltenberg, Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Amsterdam.
Aysu Okbay
NWO awarded a VENI grant to Aysu Okbay, Assistant Professor at the School of Business and Economics (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam), for her project "Polygenic prediction and its application in social science". Project description: With increasing availability of genetic data, it is becoming feasible to investigate the genetics of behavioural traits, and construct genetic predictors with meaningful predictive power. By building a public repository of genetic predictors for major social-science data sets, this project aims to facilitate their use in social science.
Philipp Koellinger
Philipp Koellinger (School of Business and Economics, Vrije Universiteit) received a Netspar Topicality Grant for his research project "The effects of genetic health risks on personal expected longevity, insurance coverage, and retirement decisions". Description: Life-cycle decisions are in part based on how long people expect to live. Therefore, observable health risks have the potential to affect individual-level decision making. Currently, genetic health information is becoming increasingly available to patients and consumers, but the extent to which genetic information may affect retirement decisions, e.g., savings, insurance coverage, and withdrawals of pension funds, is largely unexplored. We propose a research project that aims to investigate how genetic risk factors and access to genetic information may affect retirement decisions. Our proposed project uses a genetically informed empirical study design, something that has previously not been done.