Yasmine Van der Straten and Elisa de Weerd selected for conversation with Ministers of Dutch cabinet

All PhD students explained their research on the basis of a short pitch: what are the main conclusions and how this relates to broad prosperity, and also looking beyond classical economic measures that are often based on growth. Lively discussions ensued with ministers about the research, but also how broad prosperity can be better integrated into policy, and why it is important to shift focus to the long term and the future of young people, as well as how policy and economic science can be brought closer together. 

It was a dynamic and, above all, inspiring discussion and laudable that the ministers paid so much attention to this important theme, and took the time to discuss it with young PhD students and listened to all insights with great interest.

About

Yasmine Van der Straten is a second year PhD Candidate in Finance at the University of Amsterdam and Tinbergen Institute under the supervision of research fellows Enrico Perotti and Rick van der Ploeg. Her research is in climate finance and focuses on understanding the effects of financial frictions on effective strategies for addressing climate change. The paper she pitched, “Flooded House or Underwater Mortgage?” examines the relationship between financial constraints and optimal adaptation to physical climate risk at the household level and its dynamic consequences on housing, income, and wealth. Yasmine’s paper shows that climate change is intrinsically redistributive of nature and that the presence of binding financial constraints leads to an adaptation gap, which widens as climate risk intensifies. As a consequence, those most exposed to climate risk fail to reduce vulnerability to the impacts of physical risk, which exacerbates wealth inequality and has negative spillover effects to the welfare of future generations. Yasmine graduated from Tinbergen Institute’s research master in 2021.

Elisa de Weerd is a third year PhD Candidate in Health Economics at Erasmus University Rotterdam and Tinbergen Institute under the supervision of research fellow Hans van Kippersluis and John Cawley (Cornell University, United States). Her research interests include health economics, LGBTQ+ economics, the economics of risky health behaviour and labour economics. The paper she pitched, “Transgender Transitioning: Responsiveness to Policy, and Resulting Dynamics in Health, Employment, and Education” explores the size and composition of transgender individuals in the Netherlands who legally transitioned. They show that after a 2014 policy change that removed surgical requirements to legally transition, the annual number of people who legally transition more than quadrupled. Furthermore, they explore dynamics in socioeconomic and health outcomes, and find important differences in outcomes between those who transition female-to-male (FTM) and male-to-female (MTF). In order to effectively map inequalities, it is thus crucial to zoom in, as failure to do so may result in overlooking underlying inequalities.