I hold the position of Senior Research Scientist at the Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER). My research programme involves quantitative approaches to welfare economics, in particular income inequality, income distribution dynamics, taxation, social policy and social protection, social mobility, environmental policy and health. A key theme in my work is understanding the social, economic, and policy drivers of inequality.

My main interests are in the development and application of policy microsimulation models and the quantitative analysis of large data sources (administrative, survey) to aid the design, evaluation and improvement of public policy.

Infrastructure development

I have been leading several international projects focused on developing a cutting-edge modelling capacity to understand the drivers of distributional outcomes such as inequality, while contributing to LISER’s dual mission of academic excellence and societal impact. My research builds upon a decade of developmental research conducted in international partnership and funded by various sources, such as the European Commission and the National Research Fund in Luxembourg (FNR).

The focus of this developmental research has been building a scalable modelling infrastructure for social, economic, and environmental policy, with a particular focus on assessing the impact of crises such as the Financial, the Covid-19 pandemic, the Cost of Living and the Climate Crisis on wellbeing. This infrastructure has been initially applied to understand the drivers of differences in household disposable income inequality between countries. Over time, this modelling framework has generated a rich seam of research with applications across countries (EU, India, China, Indonesia), across time (EU, Australia, China,) and across policy areas (heath, inflation, environment, spatial inequality). This resulted in a strong international team, composed of collaborators with different seniority levels from over 10 countries and 3 continents.

These efforts have resulted in tangible outputs in terms of infrastructure development, high-quality publications and societal impact.

Denisa participated at the 2009 IZA European Summer School in Labor Economics, joined IZA as a Research Affiliate in February 2010 and became an IZA Research Fellow in January 2013.