Epidemiological Prediction using Deep Learning

Department of Mathematical SciencesAccurate and real-time epidemic disease prediction plays a significant role in the health system and is of great importance for policy making, vaccine distribution and disease control. From the SIR model by Mckendrick and Kermack in the early 1900s, researchers have developed a various mathematical model to forecast the spread of disease. With all attempt, however, the epidemic prediction has always been an ongoing scientific issue due to the limitation that the current model lacks flexibility or shows poor performance. Owing to the temporal and spatial aspect of epidemiological data, the problem fits into the category of time-series forecasting. To capture both aspects of the data, this paper proposes a combination of recent Deep Leaning models and applies the model to ILI (influenza like illness) data in the United States. Specifically, the graph convolutional network (GCN) model is used to capture the geographical feature of the U.S. regions and the gated recurrent unit (GRU) model is used to capture the temporal dynamics of ILI. The result was compared with the Deep Learning model proposed by other researchers, demonstrating the proposed model outperforms the previous methods.clos

A Cross-National Analysis of the Gender Pay Gap: National Perceptions and Contradictory Effects on Women's Status

This project analyzed and predicted the economic inequality problem of women with respect to sociological context among four different OECD countries by comparing men's wage and women's wages in terms of their education level, cultural background, and social relation. The index data from the International Social Survey Program (ISSP) was used to analyze the gender pay gap among four typical OECD countries. I used the Ordinary Least Square method to examine what factors have contributed to their wage gaps. First, quantitative approaches to the gender wage gap on the general population and in higher education, showed that higher education mostly lessens the gender pay gap. However, those closing gaps differ by countries, and this research analyzed four states with its perception of success factors, marriage, and professional occupations. It gives an intuitive understanding of the general trend in the gender pay gap among OECD countries and how it relates to their perceptions.Arts and Sciences Undergraduate Research Scholarship (URS)No embargoAcademic Major: EconomicsAcademic Major: Sociolog

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN EFFICIENCY WAGES AND PRICE INDEXATION IN A NOMINAL WAGE CONTRACTING MODEL

This paper examines how a link between efficiency wages and price indexation can arise in a simple nominal wage contracting model. We show that, the more elastic the worker¡¯s effort is with respect to real wages, the looser the optimal linkage of nominal wages is to the price level. This is simply because, as the worker¡¯s effort becomes more sensitive to real wages, the output-stabilizing indexing scheme has to make nominal wages less dependent on the price level, thereby delegating firms more flexibility for adjusting the output level. As long as efficiency wages as an incentive device work well in the economy, our result may help explain the recent decline in the share of U.S. union contracts adjusting to a cost of living index.Efficiency Wages, Wage Indexation, Nominal Wage Contracting