IAERE Newsletter - Issue 12

Dear IAERE community,
I am delighted to introduce you to the 12th IAERE Newsletter! I would like to thank Martina Gambaro for her help in preparing this issue and of course the IAERE community for all your contributions.
I urge you read and sign the Economists’ Statement on Carbon Pricing (available below), which aims to convey the European perspective on carbon pricing and to draw the attention of policy-makers to its importance as a key instrument, even though not the only one, to achieve the present and future de-carbonization targets.
The Newsletter is an essential tool for sharing information regarding research, events, career, and training opportunities within the Italian Environmental Economists community. I encourage the IAERE members to increase their use of the newsletter for both dissemination and communication purposes. The newsletter depends on your cooperation for content and effectiveness.
The elections for the IAERE president and council members were held during the Seventh IAERE Annual Conference in Udine and I am delighted to congratulate Alessio D'Amato - who will be the president of the association from 2022-2023, and Elisabetta Strazzera and Marcella Veronesi who will serve as Ordinary Members of the Council for 2020-2023.
I would also like to congratulate Tomas Badura and Elisabetta Cornago as the winners of the IAERE Young Environmental Economist Award.
The Newsletter is intended to provide greater visibility to our work, it is my wish that we use the information provided for fostering collaboration as well as dissemination. You will find a trove of information on recent publication, updates and announcements on events and conferences, and current job openings. Happy reading!

Sincerely,
Shouro Dasgupta
IAERE Newsletter Editor
Università Ca' Foscari Venezia | Fondazione Centro Euro-Mediterraneo sui Cambiamenti Climatici
Italy

Evaluating the impact of urban road pricing on the use of green transport modes: the case of Milan

Elisabetta Cornago is an environmental economist at the OECD Environment Directorate. She holds a PhD in economics from the Université libre de Bruxelles. This is a joint project with Alexandros Dimitropoulos and Walid Oueslati (OECD Environment Directorate). The working paper is available online.

Transport-related greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution are crucial environmental policy issues: fuel combustion in the transport sector generated almost a quarter of global CO2 emissions in 2015, with road transport making up for over 70% of total transport CO2 emissions (IEA, 2017). Urban populations are particularly exposed to air pollution externalities due to road transport: 97% of cities in low- and middle income countries and 49% of cities in high-income countries do not meet WHO air quality guidelines (WHO, 2018). This causes important economic costs, including health costs, the cost of travel time spent in congested areas and the cost of fuel wasted in congestion.
Because road transport causes an important part of emissions in urban areas and economic losses from urban congestion are significant, cities face the challenge of designing transport policies to internalise pollution and congestion externalities: urban road pricing is one of these policies. Whether it can successfully address such externalities depends on the extent to which it induces behavioural change, prompting a shift away from car use and towards soft mobility options. Providing green mobility services, such as bike sharing, is another way to facilitate a transition towards low-carbon urban transport.
With this paper, we provide the first assessment of the causal impact of congestion pricing on the use of bike sharing, a sustainable urban transport mode which has become increasingly popular in the past decade. To this end, we leverage big data describing in detail the individual patterns of use of bike sharing over 8 years in the city of Milan, where congestion pricing has been in place since 2012. Our empirical strategy focuses on two sudden policy changes resulting in a shift from priced to unpriced road use: a temporary suspension of the congestion charge, and a permanent reduction in the application schedule of the charge.
We find that congestion pricing significantly increases bike sharing in the time windows where it is applied. In Milan, the impact of the policy on bike-sharing use mainly occurs through the reduction of road traffic congestion, which makes cycling safer and more pleasant. In contrast, the direct effect of the increased relative cost of car use is secondary in individual decisions to use bike sharing. Our findings indicate that policies directly aiming to reduce car use can also have positive repercussions on the uptake of non-polluting transport options. Relying solely on direct incentives for cycling, which often involve infrastructure projects, is likely not sufficient to remove barriers to bike use.

References
IEA (2017), CO2 Emissions from Fuel Combustion, International Energy Agency, OECD Publishing, Paris
http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/9789264096134-en.
WHO (2018), WHO Global Ambient Air Quality Database (update 2018), World Health Organisation
http://www.who.int/airpollution/data/cities/en/.

7th IAERE Annual Conference
Udine, 7-8 February 2019

The Seventh Annual IAERE Conference took place in Udine last February, co-organized by University of Udine. The Conference has indeed proven successful under several respects, including the number of participants, well above 140, and the number and quality of submissions (153 papers!) and presented papers.

The Eighth Annual Conference will be held in Brescia on 6-7 February 2020.
The chair of the programme committee and the local organiser is Sergio Vergalli (our President Elect),
The call for paper will be launched in September 2019.

Tomas BADURA
Centre for Social and Economic Research on the Global Environment (CSERGE), University of East Anglia, UK

Paper: A new approach to capturing the spatial dimensions of value within choice experiments

The award motivation is the following: The paper is methodologically advanced, innovative and well written. It proposes and implements a novel approach to incorporating space within the design and presentation of stated preference choice experiments using individually generated maps, tailored to each respondent’s home location.

Paper: Evaluating the impact of urban road pricing on the use of green transport modes: The case of Milan

The award motivation is the following: The paper investigates empirically the effect of congestion pricing on the demand for zero-emission transport modes, focusing on Milan’s congestion charge on the use of bike sharing. It contributes to the ongoing debate on a relevant topic providing very useful insights and clear policy indications.

The Award was announced at the Seventh IAERE Annual Conference hosted by the Department of Economics and Statistics - University of Udine on February 7-8, 2019.

Best Poster Award
The best poster presented at the EAERE2019 Conference has been recognized with the Best Poster Award.
The winner was the poster "The role of structural reforms in the energy sector in enhancing green growth" by Gionata Castaldi, Alessandra Marcelletti, from Italian Ministry of Environment, Land and Sea - T.A. Sogesid, Italy. Congratulations!

The 2019 General Assembly of Members took place on February 7th, in Udine, in the same location where the Seventh IAERE Annual Conference was held.
The minutes and the final 2018 accounts are available here.

During the Assembly the Elections took place: Three new Council members were elected: Alessio D'AMATO, who will join the Council from 2020 to 2025 (2020-2021 as President Elect, 2022-2023 as President, and 2024-2025 as Past President), and Elisabetta STRAZZERA and Marcella VERONESI, who will be Ordinary Members of the Council from 2020 to 2023.

Letter of solidarity with the Hungarian Academy of Sciences

The members of IAERE Council signed a letter togeher with Italian Economic Association (SIE), the Italian Association for the Study of Comparative Economic Systems (AISSEC) and the Italian Association for the History of Political Economy (STOREP), expressing serious concern over the hungarian government attacks on the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and academic freedom in Hungary in general. We wish that the Hungarian government respects the independence of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and that it restores the organizational and financial stability of their research institutes. We strongly support the HAS efforts to safeguard the Academy in the commitment to academic freedom and scholarly excellence.
All the letters and statements that HAS has received in their support have been published here.
See the HAS website for further information.

IAERE at EAERE2019

IAERE organised an informal meeting during the 24th Annual Conference of the European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists held in Manchester on June 26th-29th, 2019.
The meeting was held on Saturday, June 29th, during the the lunch slot.
The meeting was intended to present IAERE future events, already planned and in fieri, and share ideas on how to improve the service to our members.
In particular, Simone Borghesi took this opportunity to present and discuss a proposal of inaugurating a series of Conferences of Environmental and Resource Economists in the Mediterranean Region.
The slides presented at the meeting are available here.

4th IAERE School (Rome, November 4-7, 2019)
Call for applications: deadline 26 July 2019

The 4^th IAERE School will be organized at the University of Rome “Tor Vergata”, and will focus on issues related to green and climate finance. It will take place in Rome, at the University of Rome “Tor Vergata”, from the 4^th to the 7^h of November, 2019.

Objectives
The role of climate finance is crucial to achieve climate related environmental objectives and, more generally, to provide (public and private, traditional and innovative) financing sources for green and sustainable projects.
The aim of this year’s school are to:
- draw young scholars’ attention on the rapidly evolving policy and governance settings, on the relevant metrics and methods as well as on the economy-wide impacts, in relation to climate and green financial needs;
- discuss specific applications and profiles of analysis which will be key in future research work in the field of green and climate finance, through lectures from experts in the relevant fields.
Students will also have the possibility to take part to meetings and/or applied sessions with lecturers during the School.

Topics
- Central banking, green finance and sustainability
- Climate risks, stranded assets and financial stability
- European emissions trading scheme and network analysis
- Green Finance and Agent-based modeling
- Sustainable household finance
- Green investments and macro-prudential policies
- Pricing climate risks and opportunities in investment decisions
- Sustainable finance and macroeconomic dynamics

Faculty
- Simone BORGHESI, Università di Siena and European University Institute, Florence, Italy
- Marianna BRUNETTI, Università degli Studi di Roma “Tor Vergata”, Italy
- Emanuele CAMPIGLIO, Vienna University of Economics and Business, Austria
- Alessio D’AMATO (School co-coordinator) Università degli Studi di Roma “Tor Vergata” and SEEDS, Italy
- Paola D’ORAZIO, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany
- Ivan FAIELLA, Banca d’Italia
- Irene MONASTEROLO, Vienna University of Economics and Business, Austria
- Mariangela ZOLI, (School co-coordinator) Università degli Studi di Roma “Tor Vergata” and SEEDS, Italy

Target
Graduate students and working professionals from any university, research institute, or other organization (private companies, government agencies, NGOs) with an interest in environmental issues and ability to read and write fluently in English. Advanced undergraduates will also be considered.

Participation fees
EUR 450 IAERE Members | EUR 530 Non IAERE Members* | EUR 470 Students non IAERE Members*
* This fee includes an IAERE membership until December 2020

How to apply
Applicants are kindly requested to fill in the application form.
Besides filling the form, applicants are required to upload a CV; a reference letter may also be uploaded in support of the applications. Application deadline is July 26th, 2019.
Applicants will be notified by September 9th, 2019
The deadline for the payment of the participation fee is September 20th, 2019.
Further information of the School website

New book by Herny Tulkens
Economics, Game Theory and International Environmental Agreements
World Scientific Lecture Notes in Economics and Policy: Volume 7
The Ca' Foscari Lectures

The science and management of environmental problems is a vast area, comprising both the natural and social sciences, and the multidisciplinary links often make these issues challenging to comprehend. Economics, Game Theory and International Environmental Agreements: The Ca' Foscari Lectures aims to introduce students to the multidimensional character of international environmental problems in general, and climate change in particular.
Ecology, economics, game theory and diplomacy are called upon and brought together in the common framework of a basic mathematical model. Within that framework, and using tools from these four disciplines, the book develops a theory that aims to explain and promote cooperation in international environmental affairs.
Other books on the topic tend to be research-oriented volumes of various papers. Instead, this is a book that offers a reasonably-sized synthesis of the multidimensional societal problems of transfrontier pollution, particularly of climate change. It uses mathematical modeling of economic and game theory concepts to examine these environmental issues and demonstrate many results in an accessible fashion. Readers interested in understanding the links between ecology and economics, as well as the connection between economics and institutional decisionmaking, will find in this text not only answers to many of their queries but also questions for further thinking.
Readership: Students and researchers who are interested in learning more about transboundary environmental issues, such as transfrontier pollution and climate change, from an environmental economics and game theory perspective.
Further information see the Book page.

PhD in Economics and Management of Innovation and Sustainability - EMIS, University of Ferrara and University of Parma - Call for applications a.y. 2019-2020

The program is designed to train Ph.D candidates having a background in business administration, and theoretical and quantitative economics. The PhD program aims at integrating basic economic tools, business administration, and statistics in a way unique to this curriculum. Research topics are ample but circumscribed in their inter-relation and specific characteristics; they allow at introducing analytical factors related to information systems, business management and organizational processes, as well as the management of complex socio-economic phenomena and policy. Regional issues are emphasized as the PhD program aims at efficiently cooperating with local businesses and institutions while keeping on truck with the research areas defined and specific expertise of the faculty. Complementarity between thematic areas (economics, business administration, and within the lines that define these macro-areas) and levels of analysis (micro-macro, business-public institutions) brings to foster skills which are highly applicable on the regional, Italian, and European job market.
Further information see the Open competition for the admission to PhD courses - XXXV Cycle page.

ANNOUNCEMENTS

Economists’ Statement on Carbon Pricing

The European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists (EAERE) approved a statement on carbon pricing to be proposed for endorsement to the whole community of economists in Europe and worldwide.
It aims to convey the European perspective on carbon pricing and to draw the attention of policy-makers to its importance as a key instrument, even though not the only one, to achieve the present and future de-carbonization targets.
The EAERE statement on carbon pricing is reproduced below and in the EAERE website. Its Italian version is available in the IAERE website.
The community of Economists is now called to support this initiative.
If you agree with its contents, please sign it and invite your colleagues to do likewise. SIGN HERE

Economists’ Statement on Carbon Pricing
Global climate change is a serious problem calling for immediate and ambitious action. Guided by sound economic principles, we are united in the following policy recommendations:

1. A price on carbon offers the most cost-effective lever to reduce carbon emissions at the scale and speed that is necessary. By correcting a well-known market failure, a carbon price sends a powerful signal, steering economic actors towards a low-carbon future. This encourages technological innovation, large-scale infrastructure development, as well as the diffusion of carbon-efficient goods and services.
2. Action should be taken to ensure that the price on carbon gradually increases until the goals of the Paris Agreement are met. A sufficiently robust price on carbon reduces the need for less efficient policies and provides the regulatory certainty companies need for long-term investment in clean-energy alternatives. A carbon price can be set through a tax or an emissions trading system.
3. The European Union has established an Emissions Trading System (ETS) covering the energy and manufacturing sectors, as well as intra-European aviation. To improve the effectiveness of the ETS, the cap needs to be tightened further while the share of auctioned permits should be increased. To safeguard competitiveness, a border carbon adjustment system could be considered in a multilateral context.
4. In parallel to the EU ETS, a carbon tax should be adopted to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions in transport and housing. In particular, the tax exemption of the international aviation and maritime sectors needs to be addressed.
5. To promote the effectiveness, fairness and political viability of EU’s carbon pricing, revenues could be used to support innovation and to address social and distributional impacts of carbon pricing.

Economists encourage the emergence of a global carbon price and are committed to deepen the understanding of carbon pricing, both as carbon taxes and emissions trading.”

3rd Sustainability Summit for South-East Europe & the Mediterranean

UN SDSN Greece, co-chaired by Prof. Phoebe Koundouri and EIT Climate KIC Greece, directed by Prof. Phoebe Koundouri, have partnered with The Economist Events (https://events.economist.com/) in establishing the Annual Sustainability Summit that aims to promote SDGs research and implementation in the Mediterranean and South-East Europe and beyond (see program of last year's Summit here).
The 3rd Sustainability Summit will host many distinguished personalities from Europe and the US, including Jeffrey Sachs Director of UN SDSN Global, chairs of all members of UN SDSN Mediterranean Sea, Black Sea and Caspian Sea, as well as heads of states, academics, businessmen, policy makers and politicians, to share their knowledge and experience on science driven solutions for the urgently needed sustainability transition for the Region. The summit is scheduled to take place on October 16th - 17th, 2019 at the Goulandris Natural History Museum in Athens. The conference will be under the auspices of the President of the Hellenic Republic, who will also open the event.
The Sustainability Summit for South-East Europe & the Mediterranean is developing into the focal annual event of the Region, bringing together in a creative dialogue, all high level representatives towards implementing Agenda 2030.
See the preliminary programme.

12th Integrated Assessment Consortium (IAMC) Annual Meeting

The 12th Integrated Assessment Consortium (IAMC) Annual Meeting will be held from December 2nd to December 4th, 2019, in the city of Tsukuba, Japan, at the Tsukuba International Congress Center. The meeting, hosted by the National Institute for Environmental Studies, aims to present and discuss the state of the art in integrated assessment modeling, evaluate and revisit the priorities of the IAM community.
In line with the previous editions, a major part of this year’s meeting will be devoted to parallel sessions on cutting edge integrated assessment model development and research, with specific focus on 15 select topics identified by the IAMC. A poster session open to poster presentations covering any topic of interest is also scheduled.
Visit the IAMC website.

EVENTS

Applied General Equilibrium Modeller ‐ ref. 8399
Fondazione CMCC, Venice, Italy
Deadline: 31 July 2019

Fondazione CMCC is taking into consideration the possibility to hire a talented, motivated and proactive researcher to cover one open position for applied general equilibrium modelling with strong research skills.
Further info at: Call for applications

Marie Skłodowska‐Curie Individual Fellowships at FEEM and Eni
Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei, Italy
Deadline: 24 July 2019

Following FEEM long time tradition of successful international post-graduate and doctoral training, and Eni interest in supporting innovation and excellence worldwide, FEEM and Eni will jointly support Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship applications for 2019.
For the current MSCA European Fellowships call, FEEM and Eni are interested in receiving proposals in the following area: "Road transport decarbonization: the role of policies and technologies in future scenarios".
Further info at: Call for applications

Post-doctoral Researcher at the Climate Unit
European University Institute, Italy
Deadline: 17 July 2019

The FSR Climate Unit of the Florence School of Regulation (European University Institute) is looking for a Post-doctoral Researcher. The main tasks include: 1) Active participation in the policy analysis, capacity building, communication and dissemination activities of a EC co-funded project (LIFE DICET) on International Cooperation on Emissions Trading; 2) Writing reports and policy briefs; 3) Collaboration in the academic and dissemination events of FSR Climate; 4) Carrying out research on EU climate and energy policies; 5) Involvement in new research proposals and projects, if and when relevant.
Further info at: Call for applications

7th IAERE Annual Conference Udine, 7-8 February 2019

Letter of solidarity with the Hungarian Academy of Sciences

IAERE at EAERE2019

4th IAERE School (Rome, November 4-7, 2019) Call for applications: deadline 26 July 2019

7th IAERE Annual Conference
Udine, 7-8 February 2019

4th IAERE School (Rome, November 4-7, 2019)
Call for applications: deadline 26 July 2019