Casual Inference Data-driven Econometric Research
We estimate what policies do, and how far those estimates can be trusted.
CIDER is the econometrics and data science group at the Departmentof Economics, University of Southern Denmark. We are thirteenresearchers, organised around methods rather than around a field.Everyone here either develops tools in econometrics, causal inferenceand machine learning, or uses them on large administrative andhistorical 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
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Casual inference What a research design can identify, what surviveswhen the standard assumptions are weakened, andhow an intervention should be allocated once capacitybinds. 25 publications · 3 grants · 8 members Read more |
Machine learning Turning archival sources into research data, and usingmachine learning at the points in an analysis whereeconomic reasoning still does the work. 7 publications · 2 grants · 3 members Read more |
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Health economics Healthcare systems, public health interventions, andthe economic consequences of health policy in theshort and long term and across generations. 47 publications · 16 grants · 7 members Read more |
Teaching The quantitative sequence at SDU, and invited PhDcourses in econometrics and causal inference elsewherein Europe. 1 grant · 9 members Read more |
People
Professors
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Christian Møller Dahl Machine Learning · Digitisation of Historical Sources · Time Series Econometrics |
Applies machine learning to digitised historicalrecords, and works on time series econometrics,quantile regression and causal inference. CAUSAL INFERENCE · MACHINE LEARNING · HEALTH ECONOMICS |
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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 |
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Jørgen T. Lauridsen Health Econometrics · Spatial Econometrics · Health Inequality |
Works on health econometrics and spatiale conometrics, studying social and geographic inequality in health and health-care use. CAUSAL INFERENCE · HEALTH ECONOMICS |
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Giovanni Mellace Causal Inference · Microeconometrics · Econometric Theory |
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 |
Associate Professors
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Christian Kronborg Health Economics · Economic Evaluation · HealthPolicy |
Costs the interventions that clinical trials test,in cardiology, psychiatry and public health. HEALTH ECONOMICS |
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Volha Lazuka Health Economics · Labour Economics · Long-Run Policy Effects |
Studies the long-run effects of health and socialpolicies on health, earnings and mortalityacross the life course. CAUSAL INFERENCE · HEALTH ECONOMICS |
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Seetha Menon Health Economics · Labour Economics · Genderand Inequality |
Studies how health shocks, job insecurity and domestic violence affect health, with a focus on gender differences. CAUSAL INFERENCE · HEALTH ECONOMICS |
Assistant Professors
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Torben Skov Dyg Johansen Machine Learning · Causal Inference · Policy Learning |
Works on machine learning for digitisinghistorical records and on causal methods forallocating an intervention when capacity islimited. CAUSAL INFERENCE · MACHINE LEARNING · HEALTHECONOMICS |
Postdoctoral Researchers
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Riccardo Di Francesco Econometrics · Causal Inference · Causal Machine Learning |
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 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 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 |
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Long-term Social Change through Normalization Reforms Targeting Peoplewith Disabilities and their Peers |
DFF Sapere Aude | 2025–2029 | Volha Lazuka 6.2M DKK |
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Beyond the Paycheck: Insights into the Effect of Unemployment, Organisational Change, and Job Security on Mental Health |
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-statespeeches by American governors, from eachstate's entry into the Union to the present, anduses text analysis to date the point at which anissue acquires moral language. It then testswhether moralisation runs ahead of measuredpolarisation. |
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 andRetirement in Europe – Danishparticipation 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-timeschooling 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 |
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| Hjernesamlingen – BRIDGE Funds the Department of Economics' part in BRIDGE, the Odense research centre built around a Danish collection of roughly 9,500brains taken from psychiatric patients between1945 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