Four researchers of Erasmus School of Economics awarded with NWO Open Competition SSH XS grant

The NWO Open Competition SSH XS Call is specifically intended to encourage curiosity-driven and bold research that involves the relatively rapid exploration of a promising idea (12 months maximum). The research projects must be ground-breaking and are high risk-high gain. Most important is that the result of each project contributes to the advancement of science.

About the project of Max Coveney

Max Coveney is an assistant professor in the Department of Applied Economics at Erasmus School of Economics. His research interests lie in applied econometrics with a focus on health, education, and labour economics. He is affiliated with the Erasmus Community for Learning & Innovation as a CLI Fellow.

Improving Dutch school track placement with transparent machine learning

Coveney’s NWO XS project “Improving school tracking decisions with machine learning predictions” focuses on school tracking decisions in the Netherlands. Students in secondary schools are placed into distinct educational tracks (VMBO/HAVO/VWO). These tracks have important implications for study and work opportunities, yet initial placements may be inaccurate, leading to costly misallocation and switches. This project tests whether a transparent algorithm can shed light on the sources of misallocation and lead to more accurate placement decisions. Using anonymised Dutch education data, the project will compare the algorithm’s recommendations with actual placements, quantify potential gains and trade-offs for different groups, and highlight student characteristics associated with misallocation.

About the project of Aksel Erbahar

Aksel Erbahar is an associate professor at the department of Economics at Erasmus School of Economics. His research lies at the intersection of international trade and political economy, with a focus on trade policy. His work examines how trade barriers shape global value chains, and how lobbying, geopolitics and policy shocks influence international trade dynamics. He is a co-author of the World Bank’s Temporary Trade Barriers Database and he is a Research Fellow at Tinbergen Institute.

Shifting suppliers: How EU defence policies may reinforce home bias

Erbahar’s NWO XS project “Internal Bridges or or National Walls? Home Bias in EU Defence Spending” studies the unintended consequences of Europe’s push for strategic autonomy. In 2023, the European Union spent €279 billion on defence, yet about three-quarters of this spending went to non-EU suppliers. The European Defence Industrial Strategy (EDIS) aims to raise EU sourcing to 50% by 2030 but inadvertently encourages governments to favour domestic firms over other EU suppliers. Such “home bias” risks fragmenting Europe at a time when unity is needed most. Using government-to-firm procurement data and comparing peacetime and wartime periods, he will examine whether security shocks and policies designed to reduce external dependence undermine internal integration, directly informing the 2027 EDIS review.

About the project of Chen Li

Chen Li is Professor in Behavioural Economics at Erasmus School of Economics. She focuses on decision making under uncertainty and over time. Her research addresses questions such as whether the poor are more averse to ambiguity, how learning affect people's ambiguity attitudes, and how people's beliefs and attitudes towards uncertainty affect their decisions in social interactions. Li is a research fellow at Tinbergen Institute and an associate member of Erasmus Research Institute of Management (ERIM). She is a NWO Veni laureate (2018).

The hidden costs of anger: gendered effects on beliefs, preferences, and outcomes

Li’s NWO XS project “She is aggressive and he deserves better: gendered effects of anger expression on negotiation outcomes” focusses on the impact of emotional expressions. While strategic emotional displays like anger can improve negotiation outcomes, they are often perceived negatively when expressed by women. This project investigates this hidden penalty by integrating the Emotions as Social Information (EASI) theory into a behavioural economics model. Through a controlled experiment, it will quantify how emotional expressions from men and women differentially affect proposers' beliefs, tastes, and attitudes. It will decompose the welfare costs of this gendered effect, moving beyond simplistic prescriptions to provide a nuanced understanding of the emotional underpinnings of the gender negotiation gap.

About the project of Julia Rose

Julia Rose is an associate professor in the Department of Applied Economics at Erasmus School of Economics. Her main area of research is behavioural finance. Her work integrates insights from psychology, neuroeconomics, and economics, to study how people make financial decisions, and how to assist them in making better decisions. She is a research fellow at Tinbergen Institute.

Moral concerns and market participation: the role of socially responsible investing

Rose’s NWO XS project “Image Investing” investigates the impact of socially responsible investment possibilities on stock market participation and market outcomes. Despite the well-known benefits of stock market participation, many households still choose not to invest. While barriers like limited financial literacy and risk perception have received much attention, recent research shows that moral and reputational concerns also play a significant role. This project examines whether Socially Responsible Investing can address these concerns by enabling individuals to align investments with their social or ethical values. Through innovative experiments, she will investigate how visible signals of social responsibility shape participation and market outcomes. The results help policymakers and financial institutions to design practical tools that empower individuals and promote socially responsible financial engagement.