Seminars , Courses and Events Quantitative Economics

MLSE is a (mostly) bi-weekly seminar to foster cooperation between the Department of Microeconomics and Public Economics and the Department of Quantitative Economics. It aims to give researchers the opportunity to present their ongoing work and to facilitate cooperation

Website of MLSE : https://www.maastrichtuniversity.nl/mlse-seminar

In case you want to follow the seminar online, please let us know. Also let us know whenever you know people that would like to receive these emails.

If you would like to present in this seminar series, please send an email to either @Bodicky, Michal (ALGEC) or @Triêu, Anh (KE).

Go to Archive Seminar s and Workshops QE

Wednesday 15 October, 12:30-13:30.

Room TS 53 A1.22

Speakers: Frits Spieksma (TU Eindhoven)

Title: Price of Diversity: the case of the TSP

Abstract: We describe a framework for quantifying the trade-off between diversity and optimality in combinatorial optimization problems, which we refer to as the Price of Diversity (PoD). 

We apply this concept to the Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP) with the triangle inequality, and show how the demand for multiple diverse solutions influences tour quality. Specifically, we consider the problem of finding two edge-disjoint tours that minimize their bottleneck cost (the length of the longer tour). For this setting , we show that the PoD, is asymptotically 8/5 in a (special) one-dimensional case and exactly 2 in general. We also consider a stricter form of diversity for the TSP and connect the resulting problem to placing queens on a chess board.

Wednesday 22 October, 12:30-13:30

Room TS53 A1.22

Speakers: Ties Bos (QE), Jip de Kok (MUMC+), Frank van Rosmalen (MUMC+)

Title: Where KE meets medicine

The Intensive Care Unit (ICU) at MUMC+ collects vast amounts of data that capture complex and dynamic processes. Patient data include vital signs, treatments, outcomes, and resource use amongst others. Such large real-world databases provide great opportunities for research but also come with substantial data quality challenges. The data is noisy, sparse, unbalanced, inherently heterogeneous, and contains many endogenous relationships. In their “Table0” paper (https://shorturl.at/JZfeI) the team of the ICU illustrates how a dataset containing observations of over 54,000 ICU admissions has been meticulously prepared for research. Such datasets provide rich opportunities for data-driven research but many methodological challenges remain to be tackled.  

This talk introduces a growing collaboration between the Department of Quantitative Economics (KE) and the ICU. It starts by outlining how and what data are available at the ICU, and what practical and methodological challenges one might face when analysing them. Next, it highlights how the data are currently used in clinical research, with a few examples such as clustering patient populations, predicting health outcomes, and validating published models on real-world data. 

Finally, the talk explores how econometric methods and insights can help address some of the ICU’s analytical challenges, using existing examples from past master and bachelor theses from collaborations between KE and MUMC+, and a glimpse into the future with a recently started joint PhD project, tackling some of these methodological problems by taking a panel data econometric approach.

Wednesday 29 October, 12:30-13:30

Room TS 53 A1.22

Speaker: Shahrezad Fahmy (QE)

Title: Joint Optimization of Fixed and On-Demand Public Transportation

Abstract: What if cities could redesign public transport networks to balance fixed and on-demand bus routes? Traditional fixed-route public transport is efficient in high-demand areas, but becomes less effective when demand is low or variable. Conversely, on-demand services provide flexibility but lack the scalability and cost-efficiency of fixed networks.

This ongoing research addresses that challenge by jointly optimizing both modes within a single, integrated framework. The proposed model integrates the design and operation of fixed-line and on-demand services. The framework combines line planning, frequency setting for fixed lines, hub location selection, and on-demand routing within a unified multilevel heuristic approach.

Schedule Overview:

• 10/09: Marc Schröder (Maastricht University)
• 17/09: Garth Tarr (The University of Sydney)
• 24/09: Tom Demeulemeester (Maastricht University)
• 1/10: Daniele Girolimetto (University of Padova)
• 8/10: Dries Vermeulen (Maastricht University)
• 15/10: Frits Spieksma (TU Eindhoven)
• 22/10: Ties Bos (QE), Jip de Kok (MUMC+), Frank van Rosmalen (MUMC+
• 29/10: Shahrezad Fahmy  (Maastricht University)
• 5/11: TBA
• 12/11: TBA
• 19/11: Yordi van Kruchten and Flip van Kasteren (MUMC+)
• 26/11: Philipp Ketz (Paris School of Economics)
• 3/12: Stijn Vansteelandt (Ghent University)
• 10/12: Heiko Röglin (University of Bonn)
• 17/12: TBA

Go to Archive Seminar s and Workshops QE