Paper introduces CageBO for optimizing complex public policy problems.
problem Complex decision-making and implicit constraints in public policy.
method CageBO framework using conditional variational autoencoder.
result CageBO outperforms baselines in optimizing large-scale police redistricting.
Survey examines public views on facial recognition technology.
problem Public acceptance and privacy concerns with facial recognition.
method Cross-national survey of 4 countries.
result Public views vary significantly across countries.
Social Security and other public policies can be viewed as a series of cash in and outflows that depend on parameters such as the age distribution of the population and the retirement age. Given forecasts of these parameters, policies can be designed to be financially stable, i.e., to terminate with a zero balance. If …
Policy shifts between Trump and Biden impact ESG investments, creating volatility.
problem Dramatic policy shifts between Trump and Biden administrations affect ESG investments.
method Analyzes contrasting policies of Trump and Biden administrations and their impacts on ESG investments.
result Policy changes significantly influence ESG investments, leading to volatility and portfolio reassessment.
Study finds dividend policy has no significant effect on IPO stock prices.
problem Impact of dividend policy on IPO price performance.
method Long-run performance statistics and GARCH model, dummy variable used.
result Dividend policy has no significant effect on IPO stock prices.
This paper proposes a method for estimating the effect of a policy intervention on an outcome over time. We train recurrent neural networks (RNNs) on the history of control unit outcomes to learn a useful representation for predicting future outcomes. The learned representation of control units is then applied to the t…
ESOP uses Bayesian optimization to find optimal lock-down schedules.
problem Finding optimal lock-down schedules balancing health and economy.
method Bayesian optimization interacting with epidemiological models.
result ESOP schedules balance public health and economic impacts.
Mobile apps and machine learning improve malaria prevention and treatment.
problem High malaria cases and deaths in low-income countries.
method Adaptive interventions using mobile health apps and machine learning.
result Increased malaria testing, adherence, and provider skills.
This paper investigates the relationship between private and public investment in R&D, while taking into account the effect of several instruments policies such as subsidies and taxes. We design a new look of knowledge spillovers and R&D cooperation to explain the contribution of public and private R&D on growth. We pr…
Algorithmic stablecoins optimize monetary policy to balance price stability.
problem Persistent inflation from centralized monetary policy.
method Propose and study a rule-based monetary policy model for algorithmic stablecoins.
result Optimal trade-off between price stability and supply stability.
Open dataset and pipeline for realistic OPE research.
problem Lack of realistic and reproducible OPE experimental studies.
method Public logged bandit dataset and Python software.
result Enables experimental comparisons of OPE estimators.
Dynamic pricing policy converges to Nash equilibrium with low regret.
problem Sequential price competition among sellers over multiple periods.
method Semi-parametric least-squares estimation of s-concave demand functions.
result Prices converge to Nash equilibrium with rate O(T−1/7) and sellers incur regret O(T5/7). For the first time ever, we analyze a unique public procurement database, which includes information about a number of bidders for a contract, a final price, an identification of a winner and an identification of a contracting authority for each of more than 40,000 public procurements in the Czech Republic between 2006…
Study models risks for low-carbon economy in Balkan countries, focusing on shadow economy and populism.
problem Risks and uncertainties in establishing a low-carbon economy in Balkan countries with transition economies.
method Transdisciplinary approach combining economic policy, public opinion, and climate change models.
result Identifies shadow economy and populism as key risk factors for low-carbon economy implementation.
Generative neural nets learn deep policies conditioned on goals.
problem Learning optimal policies for specific goals in reinforcement learning.
method Goal-conditioned neural nets that generate deep neural policies.
result Single learned policy generator can achieve any desired return.
New eco-systemic prudential policies aim to finance green companies, reducing systemic financial risk.
problem Insufficient financing for green companies despite available savings and monetary management.
method Reorient corporate accounting towards socio-environmental solvency, facilitating access with public guarantees.
result Green financing increases, reducing systemic financial risk and promoting less leveraged investments.
Framework optimizes targeting high-need individuals while estimating treatment effects.
problem Balancing resource allocation to high-need individuals with evaluating treatment effects.
method Proposes a framework to design randomized allocation rules that balance targeting high-need recipients with learning treatment effects.
result Optimized policies can significantly mitigate the tradeoff between targeting high-need individuals and estimating treatment effects.
In this paper we study continuous-time stochastic control problems with both monotone and classical controls motivated by the so-called public good contribution problem. That is the problem of n economic agents aiming to maximize their expected utility allocating initial wealth over a given time period between private …
Study finds public procurement awards, especially NGEU-funded ones, boost new lending.
problem Understanding the impact of public procurement on new lending.
method Panel data local projections model, controlling for various factors.
result Public procurement awards, particularly NGEU-funded ones, significantly increase new lending.
Simulation-based inference aids in predicting disease dynamics for health policy.
problem Predicting disease dynamics to inform public health interventions.
method Simulation-based inference using machine learning.
result Potential for efficient interpretable Bayesian inference in epidemiological models.
Cost-benefit analysis often assumes accurate estimates, but this study finds significant inaccuracies.
problem Inaccurate cost and benefit estimates in public investments.
method Largest dataset of public investments, statistical analysis of cost overruns and benefit shortfalls.
result Significant inaccuracies in cost and benefit estimates of public investments.
Study examines how governance, corruption, and R&D affect economic development.
problem The impact of corruption and governance on economic development.
method General equilibrium model with heterogeneous agents and a government, including corruption as a fraction of tax revenues.
result Redistribution and innovation-led strategies can mitigate the negative effects of corruption on economic development.
City Logistics is characterized by multiple stakeholders that often have different views of such a complex system. From a public policy perspective, identifying stakeholders, issues and trends is a daunting challenge, only partially addressed by traditional observation systems. Nowadays, social media is one of the bigg…
Method learns optimal treatment sequences from observational data.
problem Optimal dynamic treatment regimes for public policies and medical interventions.
method Doubly robust classification-based approach via backward induction.
result Achieves optimal convergence rate of n^(-1/2) for welfare regret.
Risk, including economic risk, is increasingly a concern for public policy and management. The possibility of dealing effectively with risk is hampered, however, by lack of a sound empirical basis for risk assessment and management. The paper demonstrates the general point for cost and demand risks in urban rail projec…
This article presents results from the first statistically significant study of cost escalation in transportation infrastructure projects. Based on a sample of 258 transportation infrastructure projects worth US$90 billion and representing different project types, geographical regions, and historical periods, it is fou…
Foreign policy analysis has been struggling to find ways to measure policy preferences and paradigm shifts in international political systems. This paper presents a novel, potential solution to this challenge, through the application of a neural word embedding (Word2vec) model on a dataset featuring speeches by heads o…
Improved diffusion models for sampling from given distributions.
problem Training diffusion models to sample from a given distribution.
method Benchmarked and improved off-policy methods for diffusion sampling.
result A novel exploration strategy improves sample quality.
Developed a neural topic model for classifying COVID-19 disinformation.
problem Tackles the challenge of disinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic.
method Classification-aware neural topic model (CANTM) for COVID-19 disinformation.
result Demonstrated the effectiveness of CANTM in classifying COVID-19 disinformation.
The paper improves DR estimators for off-policy evaluation in contextual bandits.
problem Challenges in evaluating policies with adaptively collected data.
method Adaptive weighting to control variance in DR estimators.
result Improved t-statistic based on the estimator is asymptotically normal.
The paper tackles adaptive policy selection to maximize social welfare, achieving optimal regret bounds.
problem Maximizing social welfare through adaptive policy selection, considering both private utility and public revenue.
method The approach involves learning response functions through experimentation, deriving lower and upper bounds for regret, and using algorithms like Exp3.
result The algorithm achieves optimal regret bounds, showing that welfare maximization is harder than multi-armed bandit problems.
New RL method learns value function for many policies using few key states.
problem Evaluate and improve policies in continuous control problems.
method Combines actor-critic architecture and policy embedding to learn a single value function for many policies.
result Value function minimizes prediction error by learning a small set of 'probing states' and their impact on policies' returns.
Widely-used public benchmarks are of huge importance to computer vision and machine learning research, especially with the computational resources required to reproduce state of the art results quickly becoming untenable. In medical image computing, the wide variety of image modalities and problem formulations yields a…
Improves pre-trial risk assessments by making them safer without changing existing rules.
problem Improving pre-trial risk assessments while maintaining deterministic rules.
method Developed a maximin robust optimization approach to find a safer policy.
result Can safely improve certain components of the risk assessment instrument.
New methods improve off-policy evaluation for survival outcomes with censoring.
problem Systematic underestimation of policy performance due to censoring bias in survival outcomes.
method Proposes IPCW-IPS and IPCW-DR to handle censoring bias in survival outcomes.
result The proposed methods are unbiased and achieve double robustness.
Adapting policy learning for data collected from evolving systems.
problem Challenges in learning optimal policies from adaptively collected data.
method Proposes an algorithm based on generalized augmented inverse propensity weighted (AIPW) estimators to control worst-case estimation variance.
result Achieves minimax rate optimal regret guarantees even with diminishing exploration.
Germany's tax admin costs likely exceed 20% of total revenue, requiring system improvement.
problem High tax administrative costs in Germany and other jurisdictions.
method Statistical data, surveys, and a novel approach to measure total administrative cost as a percentage of total tax revenue.
result Germany's 2021 tax administrative costs likely exceeded 20% of total tax revenue.
Study shows local governments smooth fiscal shocks from property tax revenues.
problem Impact of revenue shocks on local fiscal policy.
method Causal machine learning strategies and post-double-selection LASSO estimator.
result Local policymakers predominantly smooth fiscal shocks, but react differently to positive and negative shocks.
It is demonstrated that the US economy has on the long-term in reality been governed by the Keynesian approach to economics independent of the current official economical policy. This is done by calculating the two-point correlation function between the fluctuations of the DJIA and the US public debt. We find that the …
Develops a method to evaluate OPE robustness to hyperparameters and policies.
problem Difficulty in selecting and tuning OPE estimators due to limited experimental evaluations.
method Introduces IEOE (Interpretable Evaluation for Offline Evaluation) to assess robustness.
result Demonstrates improved evaluation of OPE estimators' reliability.
Most approaches in algorithmic fairness constrain machine learning methods so the resulting predictions satisfy one of several intuitive notions of fairness. While this may help private companies comply with non-discrimination laws or avoid negative publicity, we believe it is often too little, too late. By the time th…
This study analyzes public debts and deficits between European countries. The statistical evidence here seems in general to reveal that sovereign debts and government deficits of countries within European Monetary Unification-in average- are getting worse than countries outside European Monetary Unification, in particu…
Develops c-GNF for personalized social science policy analysis.
problem Challenges in estimating causal effects and counterfactual inference in social sciences.
method causal-Graphical Normalizing Flow (c-GNF) method.
result c-GNF performs well in estimating causal effects and counterfactual inference.
New method tightens bounds on causation probabilities using independent datasets.
problem Challenging point identification of causation probabilities without strong assumptions.
method Imposes counterfactual consistency between SCMs constructed from independent datasets and uses conditional mutual information.
result Significantly tighter bounds on causation probabilities are established.
The paper explores fair machine learning policies for balancing competing objectives in noisy data.
problem Balancing competing objectives in noisy data.
method Analyzes a class of policies that trace an empirical Pareto frontier based on learned scores.
result Characterizes optimal strategies and bounds Pareto errors due to score inaccuracies.
This paper proposes a use of an ordinal classifier to evaluate the financial solidity of non-life insurance companies as strong, moderate, weak, and insolvency. This study constructed an efficient classification model that can be used by regulators to evaluate the financial solidity and to determine the priority of fur…
Study one-shot strategic classification under unknown costs, improving worst-case accuracy.
problem Learning robust decision rules in strategic settings with unknown user costs.
method Formal study of one-shot strategic classification, framing as a minimax problem, designing efficient algorithms for full-batch and stochastic settings.
result Proves efficient algorithms converge to minimax solution, revealing dual norm regularization's value.
We aim to develop off-policy DRL algorithms that not only exceed state-of-the-art performance but are also simple and minimalistic. For standard continuous control benchmarks, Soft Actor-Critic (SAC), which employs entropy maximization, currently provides state-of-the-art performance. We first demonstrate that the entr…