Research

Circular Forms. Sun, Moon, by Robert Delaunay, 1912-1931. Delaunay’s paintings are materializations of optimism. This attitude probably did not come to him naturally, as he labored on this painting for nearly 20 (!) years. Photo from Google's Arts & Culture. Introduction In the previous post we looked at the main challenges highlighted in the State of Dutch Tech report issued by teachleap.nl earlier this year. If you have not read the earlier post yet, you can check it out here. If you don’t do that, I applaud you for living by the adage “Rather than trying to change something old, build something new”. You are in the right place and should subscribe to this blog. However, here we will be talking about fiscal policy (brace for it). This is a slow-moving field and the knowledge of how things are now is therefore important. As a brief summary, the challenges were: ...

The Black Square, by Kazimir Malevich, 1915. One cannot help but wonder, did Kazimir Malevich have a premonition about the state of Dutch tech in 2024? Original photo from independent.co.uk. Introduction Are you thinking about starting a company in the Netherlands? Or are you already a founder with the dream to upend industries? Or maybe you are dreaming of a job in a high-growth company while biking along the endless canals on the weekends? ...

Humans spend 90% or more of their time indoors. 90%, that’s more than some species of whale spend underwater. Spending most time indoors means breathing mainly indoor air, and it thus goes that its quality has important impact on our health. Most of us care about what we eat and drink, yet we rarely question the quality of air we breathe. While standards exist for quality of indoor air, they are mostly limited to concentrations of pollutants and temperature. There are limited and rare regulations for concentration of CO2 (levels of which are even more rarely measured) and virtually no regulations on concentrations of airborne pathogens. That’s not enough. ...

This is the first post in a new series where I highlight plots that I came across in scientific literature that will be interesting for a broad audience. Today I look at why poor stay poor (economic inequality), why you should move to Italy but not Singapore (labor productivity), and why buying processed foods costs you more than you think (microbiome diversity). Plot 1. Economic connectedness is by far the most impactful way to increase economic mobility (in the US) Economic connectedness is by far the most impactful way to increase economic mobility. Figure from Social capital I: measurement and associations with economic mobility This plot comes from the paper Social capital I: measurement and associations with economic mobility which, already from the title, is absolutely a stunning read. The researchers looked at what are drivers of upward economic mobility (in the US!) and concluded that one that matters by far the most is the relative share of high socioeconomic status (SES) friends, a quantity they termed economic connectedness. They find that if low-income children had the same type of friends as high-income children do, they would earn 20% more on average in adulthood! So what does this mean? You, dear reader, are probably relatively wealthy or have a good chance of being so in the future so if you care about economic inequality (and you should, because in the long run it hurst everybody!) go ahead and make friends with everyone, especially with people of relatively low SES! Equally stunningly, many places which you would have thought are great destinations to elevate one’s or one’s family SES (e.g., Bay Area) are performing very poorly on economic connectedness, and consequently you would be better off moving to plenty of other places, many of which are much cheaper to live in. If you did not think segregation or gentrification is a problem, now you know it is. You can find the map of economic connectedness in the US here: socialcapital.org. ...