Tilburg University

About: Tilburg University is a education organization based out in Tilburg, Noord-Brabant, Netherlands. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Anxiety. The organization has 5550 authors who have published 22330 publications receiving 791335 citations.

IGTree: using trees for compression and classification in lazy learning algorithms

Abstract: We describe the IGTree learning algorithm, which compresses an instance base into a tree structure. The concept of information gain is used as a heuristic function for performing this compression. IGTree produces trees that, compared to other lazy learning approaches, reduce storage requirements and the time required to compute classifications. Furthermore, we obtained similar or better generalization accuracy with IGTree when trained on two complex linguistic tasks, viz. letter–phoneme transliteration and part-of-speech-tagging, when compared to alternative lazy learning and decision tree approaches (viz., IB1, information-gain-weighted IB1, and C4.5). A third experiment, with the task of word hyphenation, demonstrates that when the mutual differences in information gain of features is too small, IGTree as well as information-gain-weighted IB1 perform worse than IB1. These results indicate that IGTree is a useful algorithm for problems characterized by the availability of a large number of training instances described by symbolic features with sufficiently differing information gain values.

To what extent will the banking industry be globalized? A study of bank nationality and reach in 20 European nations

Abstract: We model two dimensions of bank globalization – bank nationality (a bank from the firm’s host nation, its home nation, or a third nation) and bank reach (a global, regional, or local bank) using a two-stage nested multinomial logit model. Our data set includes over 2000 foreign affiliates of multinational corporations operating in 20 European nations and over 250 banks that serve them. We find that these firms frequently use host nation banks for cash management services, and that bank reach may be strongly influenced by this choice of bank nationality. Our results suggest limits to the degree of future bank globalization.

Why Envy Outperforms Admiration

Abstract: Four studies tested the hypothesis that the emotion of benign envy, but not the emotions of admiration or malicious envy, motivates people to improve themselves. Studies 1 to 3 found that only benign envy was related to the motivation to study more (Study 1) and to actual performance on the Remote Associates Task (which measures intelligence and creativity; Studies 2 and 3). Study 4 found that an upward social comparison triggered benign envy and subsequent better performance only when people thought self-improvement was attainable. When participants thought self-improvement was hard, an upward social comparison led to more admiration and no motivation to do better. Implications of these findings for theories of social emotions such as envy, social comparisons, and for understanding the influence of role models are discussed.

Does job loss cause ill health

Abstract: This study estimates the effect of job loss on health for near elderly employees based on longitudinal data from the Health and Retirement Study. Previous studies find a strong negative correlation between unemployment and health. To control for possible reverse causality, this study focuses on people who were laid off for an exogenous reason – the closure of their previous employers' business. I find no causal effect of exogenous job loss on various measures of physical and mental health. This suggests that the inferior health of the unemployed compared to the employed could be explained by reverse causality. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.