Skip to main content
Research

We estimate what policies do, and how far those estimates can be trusted.

CIDER is the econometrics and data science group at the Department of Economics, University of Southern Denmark. We are thirteen researchers, organised around methods rather than around a field. Everyone here either develops tools in econometrics, causal inference and machine learning, or uses them on large administrative and historical data, and many of us do both.

The applications sit mainly in health economics, labour economics and economic history. Much of the empirical work rests on data that few groups can reach: Danish and Swedish administrative registers, cohorts followed from birth into old age, clinical trials costed alongside the trial itself, and archives that the group digitizes for itself.

 

Research

Casual inference

What a research design can identify, what survives when the standard assumptions are weakened, and how an intervention should be allocated once capacity binds.

25 publications · 3 grants · 8 members

Read more

Machine learning

Turning archival sources into research data, and using machine learning at the points in an analysis where economic reasoning still does the work.

7 publications · 2 grants · 3 members

Read more

Health economics

Healthcare systems, public health interventions, and the economic consequences of health policy in the short and long term and across generations.

47 publications · 16 grants · 7 members

Read more

Teaching

The quantitative sequence at SDU, and invited PhD courses in econometrics and causal inference else where in Europe. 

1 grant · 9 members

Read more

 

People

group photo 

Professors

Giovanni Mellace (chair)
Causal Inference · Microeconometrics · Econometric Theory

SDU Profile · giome@sam.sdu.dk 
 

Develops methods for identifying and estimating causal effects, much of it on instrumental variables, and applies them in empirical labour and health economics.

CAUSAL INFERENCE · HEALTH ECONOMICS

Alexander Klein
Economic History · Economic Geography · Agglomeration Economics

SDU Profile · aklein@sam.sdu.dk
 

Works on economic geography, agglomeration and long-run growth, and on spatial econometric methods for historical data.

CAUSAL INFERENCE

Christian Møller Dahl
Machine Learning · Digitisation of Historical Sources · Time Series Econometrics
SDU Profile · cmd@sam.sdu.dk

Applies machine learning to digitised historical records, and works on time series econometrics, quantile regression and causal inference.

CAUSAL INFERENCE · MACHINE LEARNING · HEALTH ECONOMICS

Jørgen T. Lauridsen
Health Econometrics · Spatial Econometrics · Health Inequality
SDU Profile · Jtl@sam.sdu.dk

Works on health econometrics and spatial econometrics, studying social and geographic inequality in health and health-care use.

CAUSAL INFERENCE · HEALTH ECONOMICS

Associate Professors

Christian Kronborg
Health Economics · Economic Evaluation · Health Policy
SDU Profile · cka@sam.sdu.dk

Costs the interventions that clinical trials test, in cardiology, psychiatry and public health.

HEALTH ECONOMICS

Volha Lazuka
Health Economics · Labour Economics · Long-Run Policy Effects
SDU Profile · vola@sam.sdu.dk

Studies the long-run effects of health and social policies on health, earnings and mortality across the life course.

CAUSAL INFERENCE · HEALTH ECONOMICS

Seetha Menon
Health Economics · Labour Economics · Genderand Inequality
SDU Profile · smr@sam.sdu.dk

Studies how health shocks, job insecurity and domestic violence affect health, with a focus on gender differences.

CAUSAL INFERENCE · HEALTH ECONOMICS

Assistant Professors

Torben Skov Dyg Johansen
Machine Learning · Causal Inference · Policy Learning
SDU Profile · tsdj@sam.sdu.dk

Works on machine learning for digitising historical records and on causal methods for allocating an intervention when capacity is limited.

CAUSAL INFERENCE · MACHINE LEARNING · HEALTHECONOMICS 

Postdoctoral Researchers

Riccardo Di Francesco
Econometrics · Causal Inference · Causal Machine Learning
SDU Profile · rdif@sam.sdu.dk

Develops machine learning methods for estimating and interpreting heterogeneous causal effects, with applied work on worker health.

CAUSAL INFERENCE · MACHINE LEARNING

PhD Students

Katja Helena Andersen
PhD Student
Works on how unemployment, organisational change and jobsecurity affect mental health, using matched employer-employee Danish register data.
Marco Knudsen
PhD Student        
Studies how placement in special education affects the short and longrun outcomes of children with special needs.
Cecilie Brock Mejdahl
PhD Student
Supervised by Volha Lazuka, and a member of the historical economics and development group.

Visiting Researchers

Marie Ciampi
Visiting PhD Student
Studies the long-term effects of industrial policy in Southern Italy, taking the Cassa per il Mezzogiorno (1950-1992) as her main case. 

 

Funded projects

9 current awards, and 9 completed, as recorded by the Department of Economics.

Project Funder Period Grant recipient
Finding Better Policies to Help Children with Special Needs Thrive in School and Beyond

Examines how placement in special education affects children with special needs, both while they are at school and over the decade after they leave it. The work runs with the children and youth administration of Odense Municipality, which supplies the administrative records. Innovation Fund Denmark funds the doctoral component, held by Marco Knudsen
Carlsberg Foundation · Innovation Fund Denmark 2025–2028 Volha Lazuka
744,308 DKK

Long-term Social Change through Normalization Reforms Targeting People with Disabilities and their Peers

Studies the closure of institutions for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities in Denmark and Sweden between the 1980s and the 2000s, and their move into housing in ordinary neighbourhoods. It estimates what followed for the people concerned, for their families and for the neighbours who became their peers.

DFF Sapere Aude 2025–2029 Volha Lazuka
6.2M DKK

Beyond the Paycheck: Insights into the Effect of Unemployment, Organisational Change, and Job Security on Mental Health

Treats unemployment, organisational restructuring and job insecurity as causes of poor mental health rather than consequences of it, using Danish employment legislation as the source of variation. Mental health out comes are measured in register data for the affected workers.

Carlsberg Foundation 2024-2027 Seetha Menon
4.57M DKK
Do men and women react differently to an adverse health shock? Gender Differences in Healthcare Utilization and Health Behaviour

Uses unexpected cardiovascular events in the Danish registers as a shock to health, and compares how men and women change theiruse of health care afterwards. The question is how much of the gap between women's longer lives and their worse health at older ages runs through care seeking and health behaviour.
DFF 2023-2025 Seetha Menon
2.35M DKK
Moralization and Polarization

Builds a long series of state-of-the-state speeches by American governors, from each state's entry into the Union to the present, and uses text analysis to date the point at which an issue acquires moral language. It then tests whether moralisation runs ahead of measured polarisation.
Carlsberg Foundation 2021- Christian Møller Dahl
282,000 DKK
Causal Inference with Multiple IVs: Using Mendelian Randomization to Estimate the Causal Effects of Cannabis and Alcohol on Labour Productivity and of Creativity and Risk Taking on Entrepreneurship

Develops instrumental variable methods for settings with several instruments, and applies them with genetic variants as instruments in the IPSYCH cohort. The two applications estimate the effects of cannabis and alcohol consumption on schooling, earnings and health, and the effects of creativity and risktolerance on entering entrepreneurship. 
DFF 2019-2025 Giovanni Mellace
4.77M DKK
SHARE: Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe – Danish participation and the REGLINKSHAREDK infrastructure

Runs the Danish arm of a European panel that interviews people aged 50 and over in 27 countries and Israel about health, work, family and income. The Danish interviews are linked to Statistics Denmark register data in REGLINK-SHAREDK, which researchers can use free of charge.
Carlsberg Foundation and others 2004- Jørgen T. Laurdisen
5.0M DKK
A More Equal School: How the Abolishment of Half-Time Schooling in Rural Primary Schools in Sweden Affected Life Chances and Inequality

Uses the staggered abolition of half-time schooling in rural Swedish primary schools in the early twentieth century to estimate what additional classroom time was worth. Digitised birth records linked to censuses follow the affected cohorts into later life and into the next generation.
Vetenskapsrådet   Christian Møller Dahl
362,559 DKK
Hjernesamlingen – BRIDGE

Funds the Department of Economics' part in BRIDGE, the Odense research centre built around a Danish collection of roughly 9,500 brains taken from psychiatric patients between 1945 and 1982. The centre links the collection to the patient records that accompany it, so that diagnoses and their neurological correlates can be studied together.
Region Syddanmark   Christian Møller Dahl
234,200 DKK

 

Completed

Project Funder Grant recipient
DYNAMICS: The Dynamic Impacts of Child Health and Skills Enhanced by School Interventions across the Life Course Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions Volha Lazuka
1.54M DKK
Should We Tax Unhealthy Food Consumption?  DFF Giovanni Mellace
1.9M DKK
Diffusion of Medical Knowledge Research Infrastructure Carlsberg Foundation Christian Møller Dahl
432,762 DKK
Inside the Black Box of Welfare State Expansion DFF Christian Møller Dahl
316,000 DKK
Intended and Unintended Effects of the Danish Fat Tax (Påtænkte og utilsigtede virkninger af den danske fedtafgift) Helsefonden Giovanni Mellace
200,000 DKK 
LOOP: Atrial Fibrillation Detected by Continuous ECG Monitoring using Implantable Loop Recorder to Prevent Stroke in High-Risk Individuals Innovation Fund Denmark Christian Kronborg
912,960 DKK
MIME: Master Class in Innovation, Math and Economics Region Syddanmark Christian Kronborg
263,164 DKK
Older Workers' Preferences for Job Characteristics and Labour Market Participation (Seniorers præferencer for jobkarakteristika og deltagelse i arbejdsmarkedet) VIVE Torben Skov Dyg Johansen
156,567 DKK
Treatment and Prevention Methods for Gambling Addiction: Three Research Projects (Behandlings- og forebyggelsesmetoder for ludomani) Ministry of Health Christian Møller Dahl
95,797 DKK

Last Updated 20.10.2026