News Finding: The group found that if the algorithm had selected locations for refugees' resettlement, the average employment rate among those refugees would have been roughly 41 percent higher.
Paper Finding: Various mapping functions can be used.
News Context: The group, from Stanford and ETH Zurich, says the algorithm, which could be implemented at virtually no cost, could help resource-constrained governments and resettlement agencies find the best places for refugees to relocate. The group found that if the algorithm had selected locations for refugees' resettlement, the average employment rate among those refugees would have been roughly 41 percent higher. They predicted the employment rate would have been 73 percent higher among asylum seekers who arrived in 2013 if they had been assigned to the places the algorithm identified as optimal.
Paper Context: A separate model was fit for subgroups of refugees assigned to each location, thus yielding different models for each location and allowing for the discovery of refugee/location synergies. Various mapping functions can be used. Our preferred case-level metric was the predicted probability that at least one refugee in the case would find employment at the location in question.