Utilizing physics, especially thermodynamics, to model human history.

Computational Social Sciences

Agent Based Models used in policy analysis

Currently doing Agent based model in biogy

My research focus is on the economic analysis of agri-environmental policy instruments as means to navigate ecosystem service trade-offs in multifunctional landscapes. In this context, I am particularly interested in identifying policy instruments and instrument mixes allowing to align societal preferences with biophysical potential of landscapes to provide multiple ecosystem services. Here, the mutual relationship between regulatory and incentive-based instruments is of much interest. Using agent-based modelling, but also more qualitative approaches, I look at the emerging landscape-level patterns that result from various policy mixes given realistic descriptions of farmers’ behaviour and institutional settings.

My research interests include policy informatics and decision making, modeling in policy analysis and management decisions, public health management and policy, and the role of public value in policy development. I am particularly interested in less mainstream approaches to modeling that account for learning, feedback, and other systems dynamics. I include Bayesian inference, agent-based models, and behavioral assumptions in both my research and teaching.
In my dissertation research, I conceptualize state Medicaid programs as complex adaptive systems characterized by diverse actors, behaviors, relationships, and objectives. These systems reproduce themselves through both strategic and emergent mechanisms of program management. I focus on the mechanism by which citizens are sorted into or out of the system: program enrollment. Using Bayesian regression and agent-based models, I explore the role of administrative practices (such as presumptive eligibility and longer continuous eligibility periods) in increasing enrollment of eligible citizens into Medicaid programs.

Computational modelling of public policy; statutory process design; access to special educational needs provision in England and Nigeria; safeguarding and underreporting; conditions for human oversight in AI governance; simulations that the people affected by a policy can use and question.