Econometric game 2016

From April 6 – 8 the Econometric Game 2016 took place. In these days, thirty universities from all over the world worked on a case on socioeconomic inequity in healthcare with data provided by the SHARE-project. The competition itself was won by Harvard University. The Warsaw School of Economics came second, and Erasmus University Rotterdam ended in the third spot. Each year the Econometric Game advances to a higher level, aiming to be the World Championship in Econometrics. More and more universities want to compete, showing the popularity of the event. One unique thing in this edition was the crowdfunding of the Sao Paulo University, who reached out to the public in order to fund participation in the event, something which makes us, as organizers, proud of hosting this event.

The days took place in Amsterdam, with events taking place in De Kleine Komedie, Zuiderkerk and Felix Meritis. Furthermore, two public sessions were organized in this week for the general crowd. The first was a debate in Spui25 on privacy issues concerning big data, while the second event covered the robotization of the labour market. Next to this an event was organized for UvA students in Econometrics. This event included a case with municipal data of Amsterdam, and students were challenged to come up with ideas to prevent overcrowding in the city center of Amsterdam.

The complete event was sponsored by our main partners, EY and Ortec. Furthermore, funding has been provided by University of Amsterdam – Economics and Business. Without our partners the event would not be possible in it’s current form, and we are very grateful for all the help we have received, both financially as in the organizational part.

Media

We are proud that the Dutch public broadcaster NOS wrote an article on the Econometric Game. Furthermore, local broadcaster AT5 made a video on the Amsterdam Data Challenge. Further websites that have paid attention to the Econometric Game 2016 are the David Giles blog, Yahoo Finance, Consultancy.co.uk, Erasmus University, Warsaw School of Economics, University of Amsterdam and Ratio. Probably more websites have elaborated on this edition, but this gives an idea of the broad coverage of this unique event.

An aftermovie was created, shot during the several days.

The case of this edition was on socioeconomic inequity in healthcare among elderly Europeans. Using data provided by the SHARE-project, participants were challenged to come up with innovative ways of estimating the healthcare gap, investigating to what extent socioeconomic differences influence the amount of healthcare used. The case itself was split in two parts. The first part was done by all participants, while the second part was done by the ten finalist universities. These finalists were Lund University, Warsaw School of Economics, McGill University, University of Copenhagen, ENSAE, Aarhus University, Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam, Harvard University, University of Rome Tor Vergata and University of Antwerp. We are very grateful to the casemakers and jury for all the time invested and the cooperation in the whole process of the Econometric Game.

Case A

Case B

Casemakers

Teresa Bago d’Uva is an Associate Professor at the Erasmus School of Economics. Before that, she obtained her PhD in Economics at the University of York. Her areas of interest are applied microeconometrics and health economics, and her research has focused mainly on measurement of biases in self-reported health and inequalities in health and health care.

Pilar García-Gómez is an Associate Professor at the Erasmus School of Economics, and Research Fellow of the Tinbergen Institute. Her areas of research are health economics, labour economics and impact evaluation. Her research has focused on understanding the relationship between health and labor market outcomes and the role that labor market policies and social security incentives play in shaping this relationship, and the measurement of inequality in health, health care and long-term care.

Jury

Maarten Lindeboom is Professor of Economics and Chair of the Department of Economics at VU University Amsterdam. He studied econometrics at VU University of Amsterdam and graduated in 1986. He received his Ph.D. at Leiden University in 1992. Maarten Lindeboom held visiting positions in the UK and the US and is currently editor of the Journal of Health Economics. His research interests are Health and Labor economics, in particular issues related to Health and Work, The Measurement of Health and The Determinants of Later Life Mortality.

Erik Plug is Professor of Economics at Amsterdam School of Economics of the University of Amsterdam. Previously, he was Director of Graduate Studies at Tinbergen Institute and held positions at Erasmus University Rotterdam and Wageningen University. He has a Master in Econometrics and PhD in Economics from the University of Amsterdam. His research interests relate to family, education and labor economics. His research is always empirically orientated. Recent examples include family-driven estimation strategies (relying on adoptees, twins and IVF treatments) applied to topics in intergenerational mobility, the economics of sexual minorities, family labor supply models and family well-being. Erik Plug’s work has been published in the American Economic Review, Industrial and Labor Relations Review, Journal of Economic Literature, Journal of Human Resources, Journal of Labor Economics, Journal of Political Economy and the Quarterly Journal of Economics.

Winning solutions

As science is and should be open to allow people to learn from each others work, the papers of the top 3 universities can be found here. The winner of this edition was Harvard University, Warsaw School of Economics came in second and Erasmus University Rotterdam ended third.

1. Harvard University
   • Harvard Case A 2016
   • Harvard Case B 2016
2. Warsaw School of Economics
   • Warsaw Case A 2016
   • Warsaw Case B 2016
3. Erasmus University Rotterdam
   • Erasmus Case B 2016