NWO XS Grants for six projects by FEB researchers

The Faculty of Economics and Business (FEB) is happy to announce that six projects by FEB-researchers have each received a grant of € 50,000 from the Dutch Research Council (NWO). Mariko Klasing, Maite Laméris, Mark Treurniet, Dea Tusha, Laura Viluma and Yan Xu are the project leaders of the six projects. The awarded projects focus on a wide range of topics, from uncovering the deeper roots of populism, building resilience against political violence and the environmental constraints of data centres in Europe to the effects of menopause on the economic lives of women.

Economic shocks and support for populist movements

Mariko Klasing, associate professor at FEB’s Department of Global Economics & Management, received the grant for her project titled ‘Uncovering the Deeper Roots of Populism’. Populism has surged across many countries over the past 15 years. Economic insecurity is widely seen as its key driver. Existing research on populism has primarily studied electoral outcomes. This leaves unclear how exactly economic shocks translate into support for populist movements. With her project, Klasing will deliver the first comprehensive analysis of the impact of economic shocks on people’s values and attitudes. By uncovering the attitudinal mechanisms linking economic hardship to populist appeal, her project will provide crucial insights for policymakers seeking to strengthen democratic resilience and design interventions that reduce radicalization.

The long-run effects of forced labor

Maite Laméris, Juliette de Wit and Tobias Grohmann received the grant for their project titled ‘Historical Forced Labor and Present-Day Society: The Long-Run Effects of the Arbeitseinsatz’. Laméris and De Wit are both assistant professor at FEB’s Department of Global Economics and Management. Grohmann obtained his PhD at FEB in 2024 and is currently a Research Fellow at the Migration Policy Centre (MPC) of the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence. In the project, they will study the long-run effects of the forced labor displacement between 1940 and 1945 on the present-day Dutch society. More than a quarter million Dutch men were forcibly sent to work in Nazi Germany under the Arbeitseinsatz. Harmonizing and geocoding digitized archival data from the Dutch National Archives, this project links historical local exposure to forced labor to contemporary socio-economic outcomes, including civic norms and labor market experiences. By exploiting variation in forced labor intensity and combining it with other historical and contemporary data, the project will provide novel evidence on how historical collective trauma shapes societies decades later.

Peace dialogues and inter-group contact to build resilience against political violence

Mark Treurniet, assistant professor at FEB’s Department of Economics, Econometrics & Finance, received the grant for his project titled ‘Peace dialogues and inter-group contact to build resilience against political violence’. Over one-third of elections globally result in violence. In polarized contexts, community-based interventions may offer a promising approach to prevent electoral violence. Yet, individuals often self-select into socially or politically homogeneous environments, raising questions about the effectiveness of such interventions. In the project, Treurniet and his team will study the effects of church-led peace dialogues in Maputo, Mozambique, using a randomized experiment. Participants will engage in structured dialogues, either in homogeneous (within a single church) or heterogeneous groups (mixed across ideologically distinct churches). The research team will assess impacts on attitudes toward violence, tolerance, and civic behaviour, while testing feasibility of measuring spillovers and community-level outcomes in a future, scaled-up study.

Environmental constraints of data centres in Europe

Dea Tusha, assistant professor at FEB’s Department of Global Economics and Management, received the grant for her project titled ‘Powering Up the Servers: Regional Spillovers and Environmental Constraints of Data Centres in Europe’. Data centres are essential for cloud computing and artificial intelligence, but they also consume large amounts of electricity and water, create relatively few direct jobs, and can increase greenhouse gas emissions. Governments across Europe support data centre investments, yet evidence on their wider economic and environmental impacts is limited. Tusha’s project provides the first Europe-wide, region-level study of how data centres affect regional employment, wages, productivity, and emissions, and whether these effects differ in regions facing pressure on electricity grids or water resources. With the results, Tusha aims to inform more balanced and sustainable digital infrastructure policy.

Effects of menopause on the economic lives of women

Laura Viluma, assistant professor at FEB’s Department of Economics, Econometrics & Finance received the grant for her project titled ‘How does menopause affect the economic lives of women?’. Although menopause affects half of the world’s adults, our current understanding of its consequences for women’s economic lives, health, and well-being is limited. The menopause transition can start up to 10 years before the cessation of menstruation and can bring a range of physical and mental symptoms that affect daily functioning and well-being. In this project, Viluma will link data from the large-scale cohort study and biobank Lifelines with Dutch administrative data on working hours, earnings, and other economic outcomes for women before and after menopause to examine the effects of menopause on women's economic outcomes.

Designing pay transparency rules that work

Yan Xu, assistant professor at FEB’s Department of Economics, Econometrics & Finance received the grant for her project titled ‘Seeing the Wage Isn’t Enough: Designing Pay Transparency Rules That Work’. Pay transparency laws are expanding worldwide, yet evidence shows that revealing pay can disappoint - and sometimes backfire - once employers and workers respond strategically. Xu’s project advances a new design idea: transparency may work better when it reveals the negotiation process (whether people negotiated) rather than the negotiation outcome (what they earned). A preliminary game-theoretical analysis suggests that outcome disclosure can trigger defensive employer responses (for example compressed offers or strategic breakdowns) that blunt worker learning, while process disclosure can encourage negotiation and potentially narrow gender gaps. Through two experiments (lab and representative online) Xu will test which rules work, for whom, and analyze why.