News Finding: "The employment gains that we're projecting are quite substantial, and these are gains that could be achieved with almost no additional cost to the governments or resettlement agencies," said Kirk Bansak, a lead author of the study and a political science PhD student.
Paper Finding: Our algorithm is flexible and can accommodate multiple criteria and constraints.
News Context: 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. "The employment gains that we're projecting are quite substantial, and these are gains that could be achieved with almost no additional cost to the governments or resettlement agencies," said Kirk Bansak, a lead author of the study and a political science PhD student. "By improving an existing process using existing data, our algorithm avoids many of the financial and administrative hurdles that can often impede other policy innovations."
Paper Context: 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. Our algorithm is flexible and can accommodate multiple criteria and constraints. For the algorithm to obtain reliable predictions, it is important that the historical assignment process not be determined by unobserved refugee characteristics.