Economic networks are highly interconnected and rapidly evolving due to globalization and technological advancements. Traditional economic analyses often face challenges such as fragmented data and difficulty distinguishing causal relationships. This project tackles these challenges by developing a temporal causal network model leveraging high-resolution nighttime light data.

The research aims to uncover complex interactions within global economic networks, identifying influential clusters and revealing core-periphery structures. These insights will empower policymakers with predictive tools to guide interventions and strengthen economic resilience.

Debraj Roy is researcher at the Computational Science Lab (CSL) of the Informatics Institute.

List of NWO Granted projects Open Competition SSH XS 2025 round 1

SSH

Non-programmed, Curiosity-driven research

With the NWO Open Competition-SSH, NWO Social Sciences and Humanities wants to offer researchers the opportunity to carry out research into a subject of their own choosing without any thematic constraints. The funding instrument aims to serve a broader group of researchers in different stages of their academic careers.

The SSH Open Competition XS Call for proposals is specifically intended to encourage curiosity-driven and innovative research that involves the relatively rapid exploration of a promising idea. 

The NWO Domain Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) has three different funding programmes in the Open Competition. These grants are for ideas that hold great promise (XS) and for large-scale grants (M, L). The SSH-XS grants are available for projects with a maximum budget of 50,000 euro to enable proposals for curiosity-driven, innovative research in the research fields covered by the NWO Domain SSH. The Call for proposals of 2025 has 3 rounds. This information concerns the second round.