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(2025).

Generating survey databases with Wasserstein Generative Adversarial Networks.

Appl Intell 55, 1095 (2025).

In a world increasingly surrounded by data, data privacy and anonymization are becoming more and more important. Under these circumstances, the need for synthetic databases that replicate the characteristics of the population while preserving privacy is arising. In this article, we investigate how we can use Wasserstein Generative Adversarial Networks (WGANs), developed by Arjovsky et al. [1] in the context of image generation, to create synthetic survey databases. Survey data have both categorical and continuous variables and especially contain sampling weights that will be introduced in the proposed procedures. We evaluate the quality of the (generated) synthetic data through different indicators and especially a new practical and intuitive measure based on Support Vector Data Description (SVDD). All our analyses are achieved with the Labour Force Survey (LFS) data for Belgium.

Field : scientific publication

Hugues Annoye

Cédric Heuchenne

Alessandro Beretta

(2025).

Statistical matching using autoencoders-canonical correlation analysis, kernel canonical correlation analysis and multi-output multilayer perceptron.

Knowledge-Based Systems Vol. 330, no.B, p. 114626 (2025).

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A lot of data are gathered every day, whether via surveys or other sources. For many people, the need for variables from different data sources is a key factor and leads to the need of methods to combine them. A recognized practice to combine data sets in this field is statistical matching. In this paper, we investigate and extend to statistical matching an Autoencoders-Canonical Correlation Analysis - A-CCA. A-CCA is an extension of KCCA, that reduces the need for kernels, with the added benefit of a dimensionality reduction. It can be regarded as an extension of Deep Canonical Correlation Analysis -DCCA-, providing enhanced flexibility that makes it well suited for statistical matching. This method is designed to deal with various variable types, sampling weights and incompatibilities among categorical variables. We compare the performance of this method with other methods based on Kernel Canonical Correlation Analysis -KCCA- or Multi-output Multilayer Perceptron -MMLP-, using 2017 Belgian Statistics on Income and Living Conditions -SILC-. We divide this data set in two parts and we act as if they were coming from two different sources.

Field : scientific publication

Daniel Coppens d’Eeckenbrugge

Audric De Bevere

Gilles Grandjean

François Meuwissen

(2025).

Les marchés carbone européens : bilan, défis et perspectives

Regards economiques.

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L’Union européenne vise la neutralité carbone à l’horizon 2050. Pour atteindre cet objectif, elle a fait des systèmes d’échange de quotas d’émission sa stratégie centrale. Ces mécanismes reposent sur un principe simple : les entreprises doivent disposer de quotas pour couvrir leurs émissions de CO2, dont le volume total diminue chaque année. Un prix du carbone émerge ainsi par l’échange de ces quotas, incitant à réduire les émissions et à investir dans des alternatives durables. Ce numéro de Regards économiques propose une analyse de ces politiques, de leurs effets économiques et sociaux, et s’interroge sur leur capacité à concilier transition énergétique, justice sociale et compétitivité.

Field : scientific publication

Willem Sas

Tom Truyts

Francesco Pascucci

(2024).

INTERREGIONALE FINANCIËLE STROMEN IN BELGIË

Publicatie Vlaanderen.

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In July 2017, A. Decoster and W. Sas - KU Leuven - published a study on interregional financial flows in Belgium resulting from the federal budget. The study was based on a monitoring model they developed called “Moniflow,” which allows for annual updates. The Flemish Government has already provided two updates to the model. In this report, Willem Sas and Tom Truyts intentionally focus on the years 2000 to 2023 because they primarily relied on available administrative data to map the impact of the pandemic in detail for the first time. In this report, they also provide forecasts up to 2028. Additionally, they discuss why interest payments on the federal debt should not be included in an annual transfer calculation. The calculations were performed in two ways. First, they used population weighting, where financial flows were calculated based on regional population proportions. Second, they employed income weighting, which considers federal revenues and expenditures based on the contribution each region makes to federal income.

Field : scientific publication statistics

Hugues Annoye

Cedric Heuchenne

Alessandro Beretta

(2024).

Statistical matching using kernel canonical correlation analysis and super-organizing map

Expert Systems with Applications, Elsevier, 2024, p. 123-134.

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The potential to study and improve different aspects of our lives is ever growing thanks to the abundance of data available in today’s modern society. Scientists and researchers often need to analyze data from different sources; the observations, which only share a subset of the variables, cannot always be paired to detect common individuals. This is the case, for example, when the information required to study a certain phenomenon is coming from different sample surveys. Statistical matching is a common practice to combine these data sets. In this paper, we investigate and extend to statistical matching two methods based on Kernel Canonical Correlation Analysis - KCCA - and Super-Organizing Map - Super-OM. These methods are designed to deal with various variable types, sample weights and incompatibilities among categorical variables. In the first case, we use KCCA, a non-linear extension of CCA, to create canonical variables that we can compare in the two data sets. In the second case, Super-OM uses organizing maps to create subgroups of individuals who share the same characteristics. We use the 2017 Belgian Statistics on Income and Living Conditions - SILC - and we compare the performance of the proposed statistical matching methods by means of a cross-validation technique, as if the data were available from two separate sources. The results indicate that our proposed methods are superior to existing methods because they preserve the distribution of generated variables while also providing good predictions. Existing methods typically only achieve one or the other. These new techniques open the door to improving statistical matching in other applications such as medicine, economics, …

Field : scientific publication statistics

Cedric Heuchenne

Alessandro Beretta

(2022).

Competing risks proportional-hazards cure model and generalized extreme value regression: an application to bank failures and acquisitions in the United States

Journal of Applied Statistics, (2022).

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Several commercial banks in the United States disappeared during the last decades due to failure or acquisition by another entity. From a survival analysis perspective, however, the high censoring rate suggests that some institutions are likely to be immune to failure and/or acquisition. In this study, we use a competing risks proportional-hazards cure model in order to measure the impact of bank-specific and macroeconomic variables on the probabilities of being susceptible to these events (i.e. incidence) and on the survival time of susceptible banks (i.e. latency). Moreover, we propose to model the incidence distribution using Generalized Extreme Value regression and compare the results with the ones obtained by the usual logistic regression model. The proposed methodology is evaluated by means of a simulation study and then applied to a dataset of more than 4000 United States commercial banks spanning the period 1993–2018.

Field : scientific publication statistics

Antoine de Mahieu

(2021).

In-work Benefits in Belgium: Effects on Labour Supply and Welfare

International Journal of Microsimulation, Vol. 14, no.1, p. 43-72 (2021).

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Belgium has implemented, following the example of other countries, in-work benefit policies since the early 2000’s, with the objective of increasing employment rates and fighting poverty. Belgian in-work benefits differ from most other in-work benefits as eligibility requires low hourly earnings. We study the effects extensions of those benefits would have both on labour supply and welfare, using a random-utility - random-opportunity model estimated on cross-sectional SILC datasets. Results show that further increasing the benefits would slightly increase labour supply and welfare of low-to-middle income deciles, but at very high net cost per job created. We compare our results with existing research and explain some mechanisms that possibly led to an underestimation of negative intensive margin labour supply responses in previous simulations.

Field : scientific publication labor economics policy evaluation

Cedric Heuchenne

Alessandro Beretta

(2021).

penPHcure: Variable Selection in Proportional Hazards Cure Model with Time-Varying Covariates

The R Journal - Vol. 31, no.1, p. 116-129 (2021).

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We describe the penPHcure R package, which implements the semiparametric proportionalhazards (PH) cure model of Sy and Taylor (2000) extended to time-varying covariates and the variable selection technique based on its SCAD-penalized likelihood proposed by Beretta and Heuchenne (2019a). In survival analysis, cure models are a useful tool when a fraction of the population is likely to be immune from the event of interest. They can separate the effects of certain factors on the probability of being susceptible and on the time until the occurrence of the event. Moreover, the penPHcure package allows the user to simulate data from a PH cure model, where the event-times are generated on a continuous scale from a piecewise exponential distribution conditional on time-varying covariates, with a method similar to Hendry (2014). We present the results of a simulation study to assess the finite sample performance of the methodology and illustrate the functionalities of the penPHcure package using criminal recidivism data.

Field : scientific publication statistics

Tom Truyts

Olivier Bos

(2021).

Effets de réputation dans les enchères : l’inégalité des perdants

Revue économique - Vol. 72, no. 3, p. 443-458 (2021).

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Nous étudions un modèle à valorisations privées indépendantes, où le classement de toutes les offres est révélé à un observateur extérieur, information qui lui permet d’estimer au mieux le type des participants. Alors l’équivalence du revenu est conservée pour les enchères sous plis scellés, l’enchère statique optimale nécessite un prix de réserve spécifique, et un droit d’entrée continu pour extraire tout le surplus des enchérisseurs avec les plus faibles valorisations. Une réponse illustrative, sur la taille optimale du classement des offres à révéler, est apportée. Enfin, la non-équivalence entre les enchères ascendante et au second prix est établie. Les applications sont aussi diverses que la vente d’œuvres d’art ou le financement d’œuvres caritatives.

Field : scientific publication game theory

Koen Declerq

Joana Elisa Maldonado

De Witte Kristof

(2021).

The effects of parental involvement in homework: two randomised controlled trials in financial education

Empirical Economics, (2021).

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This paper provides causal evidence on the effects of parental involvement on stu- dent outcomes in a financial education course based on two randomised controlled trials with a total of 2,779 students from grade 8 and 9 in Flanders. Using an ex- perimental design with three treatment groups, the impact of parental involvement in homework is distinguished from the standalone impact of the classroom inter- vention and homework itself. Intention-to-treat analysis reveals that access to the intervention effectively improves students’ financial literacy in the two dimensions of knowledge and behaviour. The classroom intervention combined with a homework assigned to be completed with the parents increases financial literacy by 0.38 stan- dard deviations. On average, the added value of prompting parental involvement in homework is not statistically significant. Yet, stimulating parental involvement has significant positive effects on behaviour for disadvantaged students.

Field : scientific publication education economics

Olivier Bos

Francisco Gomez-Martinez

Sander Onderstal

Tom Truyts

(2021).

Signalling in auctions : Experimental evidence

_Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 187 – April 2021.

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We study the relative performance of the first-price sealed-bid auction, the second-price sealed-bid auction, and the all-pay sealed-bid auction in a laboratory experiment where bidders can signal information through their bidding behaviour to an outside observer. We consider two different information settings: the auctioneer reveals either the identity of the winning bidder only, or she also reveals the bidders’ payments to an outside observer. We find that the all-pay sealed-bid auction in which the bidders’ payments are revealed outperforms the other mechanisms in terms of revenue, while this mechanism underperforms in terms of efficiency relative to the winner-pay auctions.

Field : scientific publication game theory

Tom Truyts

Olivier Bos

(2020).

Auctions with signaling concerns.

Journal of Economics & Management Strategy - Vol. 30, p. 420-448 (2021).

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We study a symmetric private value auction with signaling, in which the auction outcome is used by an outside observer to infer the bidders’ types. We elicit conditions under which an essentially unique D1 equilibrium bidding function exists in the second-price auction and the English auction. We establish there is no equivalence between these two auction designs, neither in bidding strategies nor in expected revenue. This is because the presence or absence of an increasing price clock, affects signaling incentives differently in both auction formats, and thereby also the bidders’ incentives to overbid their types. This leads to a strictly higher expected revenue in the second-price auction than in the English auction. Our analysis is completed by a comparison with other disclosure policies. Applications include art auctions and charity auctions.

Field : scientific publication game theory

Koen Declerq

Olivier De Groote

(2020).

Tracking and specialization of high schools: Heterogeneous effects of school choice

Journal of Applied Econometrics, (2021).

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We analyze the impact of choosing an elite school on high school graduation in an early tracking system in Flanders (Belgium). Whereas elite schools offer only an academic track, most other schools offer multiple tracks. On average, students experience a 3.3 percentage point increase in the likelihood of obtaining a degree. We find that the effects are heterogeneous. On average, students who self-select into elite schools do not experience an effect. However, students who do not choose an elite school would experience positive effects. Our results can be explained by different tracking decisions in both types of schools.

Field : scientific publication education economics