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I write these few lines to send you my greetings to the whole IAERE community since my term as President of the Association is about to finish at the end of the year. It has been a great experience and I would like to thank you all for your help and support during these two years. We have seen the Association growing in terms of number of members (we are currently 183 members) and participants to our annual conference (always more than 130 in the last two editions), with active participation of many colleagues from abroad (accounting for 22% of our individual members). We continued to have a large participation from young scholars (the majority of our individual members), which is in the DNA of our Association from the very beginning. This made the IAERE Young Environmental Economist Award particularly meaningful and very competitive in the last editions. We had two very interesting IAERE Schools on timely topics that are at the centre of much debate. This gave many promising PhD students/young scholars the opportunity to know each other and get in contact with some experienced colleagues. I would like to take this opportunity to thank the local organisers and our Secretaries for the remarkable effort in setting up the two Schools and ensuring that everything went fine by taking care of all details. From personal participation to international meetings, I would like to add that our activity is much appreciated and increasingly recognised at the international level. In particular, I received much interest and support to the proposal of holding a series of conferences of the Environmental and Resource Economists of the Mediterranean region, which I launched at the IAERE meeting during the last EAERE conference in Manchester. On that occasion I proposed that the first meeting of the Mediterranean Environmental and Resource Economists could take place back-to-back to one of our future Annual conferences and we are already working for that. The representatives of most Mediterranean countries in EAERE have already formally supported the initiative and some have also proposed their candidature to hold such a meeting in the future. I am also very happy of the collaboration established with SIE (the Association of Italian Economists) that has regularly hosted IAERE sessions in the last editions of its annual conference and has given increasing visibility to our Association also through its plenary session and the continuous dissemination of our activities. The same applies to the mutual collaboration with AIEAA (the Italian Association of Agricultural and Applied Economics) that regularly participates to our Annual conference with a special session and hosts an IAERE session in its own conference. We are working to possibly extend collaborations with other associations in the future as this proves to be mutually enriching. Last but not least I would like to thank the Secretariat of IAERE for its precious support over these years and Shouro for his great work with this Newsletter. Much remains to be done. Knowing the commitment and energy of our next Presidents, Sergio and Alessio, I have no doubt that our Association will keep growing in many aspects and several things will be further improved in the future. Finally, a warm thank you to all of you for the friendly and encouraging atmosphere that I have always perceived during these two years, which is the most beautiful aspect of this great experience. I take this opportunity to send you my best wishes for the upcoming holidays, and I look forward to seeing you all in Brescia!
Simone Borghesi IAERE President FSR Climate - European University Institute | University of Siena Italy
Dear IAERE community,
I am delighted to introduce you to the 13th 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.
The Newsletter is an essential tool for sharing information regarding research, events, career, and training opportunities within the Italian Environmental Economists community. I must reiterate that the newsletter depends on the cooperation from the IAERE members for content and effectiveness. I encourage the IAERE members to increase their contribution.
Economists Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, and Michael Kremer recently won the 2019 Nobel Economics Prize for their work in fighting global poverty. The three economists showed that tackling poverty could be easier by breaking it down into smaller and more precise questions in areas such as education and healthcare. This will have implications for our discipline as well.
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 and contributing!
See you in Brescia!
Sincerely, Shouro Dasgupta IAERE Newsletter Editor Università Ca' Foscari Venezia | Fondazione Centro Euro-Mediterraneo sui Cambiamenti Climatici Italy
A new approach to capturing the spatial dimensions of value within choice experiments
Tomas Badura Centre for Social and Economic Research on the Global Environment (CSERGE), University of East Anglia, UK
In my roles I am focusing on applied and conceptual issues surrounding the efforts to incorporate the value of nature within the sustainable development and biodiversity related policy processes and decisions (e.g. Badura et al 2016). The research projects I have participated in thematically concern agriculture and urban issues and methodologically use of (spatial dimensions) of stated preference (e.g. Badura et al. 2019a) as well as other valuation methods (e.g. Badura et al. 2019b) and natural capital accounting (Turner et al. 2019a). Research areas and teams, I am active in are often policy driven (ibid; e.g. Bateman et al. 2014; Bateman 2015). This builds on my pre-PhD employment and developed passion for policy analysis at an environmental policy institute IEEP in Brussels (e.g. Russi et al. 2013; ten Brink et al. 2011,2012).
In our recent applied work, we provide evidence of public support and willingness to pay (WTP) for environmental improvements in agricultural and urban landscapes. Using choice experiments, we document positive preferences for location specific agri-environmental interventions in Great Britain (Badura et al. 2019a); as well as positive WTP for aspects of a national level CAP Pillar II payments in Czech Republic (Grammatikopoulou et al. submitted). We also found significant public support for environmental enhancements of urban public spaces in terms of an increased use of nature-based solutions for adaptation to climate change in Prague (Badura et al. in prep.).
On a macro level, my teams also focus on the development of national environmental and ecosystem accounting (see SEEA). We have contributed to the UN’s SEEA Experimental Ecosystem Accounting’s (SEEA EEA) revision process with a discussion paper focused on habitat and biodiversity related ecosystem services (King et al. 2019) and are currently working on a similar paper on the use of value (or benefit) transfer in the ecosystem accounting context. Majority of my natural capital accounting (NCA) related research stems from a three-year project at CSERGE for the European commission where we have focused on how monetary and non-monetary valuation methods can support the development of NCA in the EU (Badura et al. 2017; Turner et al 2019b). A recent policy forum paper (Turner et al 2019a) based on this work proposes typology of three broad approaches to environmental accounting that aims to stimulate greater experimentation in this important area of applied work. Lastly to this area, as part of CzechGlobe we have recently started 4-year H2020 project MAIA that aims to further develop SEEA EEA methodology and its application in EU member states and CZ in particular.
In terms of a personal preference, however, I am most deeply interested in further development of spatial stated preference (SP) methods for valuing environmental goods and services. This area of research (see e.g. De Valck and Rolfe 2018; Glenk et al. 2019) aims to reflect the different aspects of space, such as distance, administrative boundaries, or substitutes in SP valuation surveys and empirical analysis of collected data. This area constituted major part of my PhD research where we developed a novel approach to incorporating space within the design and presentation of choice experiments (CE) (Badura et al. 2019a; IAERE 2019 presentation). In this approach CE scenarios were presented through individually generated maps, tailored to each respondent’s home location (see Picture below). Each choice situation was generated in real time and was underpinned by spatially tailored experimental designs that reflect current land uses and incorporated locational attributes relating to physical and administrative dimensions of space. We contrasted our spatially explicit approach with a commonly applied tabular CE approach finding that our approach exhibits a number of desirable characteristics relative to the tabular format. The further development of the presented methodology in this publication (Badura et al. 2019a) is hopefully where I would like to concentrate in all the areas mentioned above.
References
Badura T, Bateman I, Agarwala M, Binner A (2016), 'Valuing preferences for ecosystem related goods and services', in: Roy Haines-Young, Marion Potschin, Robert Fish and Kerry Turner ed(s) Handbook on Ecosystem Services, Earthscan from Routledge
Badura T, Ferrini S, Agarwala M and Turner K (2017) Valuation for Natural Capital and Ecosystem Accounting. Synthesis report for the European Commission.
Badura T, Ferrini S, Burton M, Binner A, Bateman I (2019a) Using Individualised Choice Maps to Capture the Spatial Dimensions of Value Within Choice Experiments. Environmental and Resource Economics
Badura T, Lorencova E, Vackaru D, Ferrini S ( in prep. ) Using choice experiment to value preferences for an increased use of nature based solutions for climate change adaptation in Prague
Badura T, Turner K, Ferrini S (2019b) Natural Capital and Ecosystem Services Valuation: Assisting Policy Making. In: Routledge Companion to Environmental Planning and Sustainability
Bateman I, Coombes E, Fitzherbert E, Binner A, Badura T, Carbone C, Fisher B, Naidoo R, Watkinson A (2015) Where the wild things are: Conserving tropical biodiversity via market forces and spatial targeting. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
Bateman I, Day B, Agarwala M, Bacon P, Badura T, Binner A, De-Gol AJ et al. (2014) UK National Ecosystem Assessment Follow‐On (NEA‐FO) Workpackage3a: Economic value of ecosystem services for the UK Department of Environment, Fisheries and Rural Affairs. Cambridge, UNEP‐WCMC
De Valck J, Rolfe J (2018) Spatial Heterogeneity in Stated Preference Valuation: Status, Challenges and Road Ahead. Int Rev Environ Resour Econ 11:355–422. DOI: 10.1561/101.00000097
Glenk K, Johnston RJ, Meyerhoff J, Sagebiel J (2019) Spatial dimensions of stated preference valuation in environmental and resource economics: methods, trends and challenges. Environ Resour Econ. DOI: 10.1007/s1064 0-018-00311-w
Grammatikopoulou I, Badura T, Vackaru D (submitted) Public preferences for post 2020 agri-environmental policy in the Czech Republic: a choice experiment approach
King S., Ferrier S., Turner K., Badura T. (2019). Discussion paper 11: Research paper on habitat and biodiversity related ecosystem services. Paper submitted to the Expert Meeting on Advancing the Measurement of Ecosystem Services for Ecosystem Accounting, New York, 22-24 January 2019
Russi D, ten Brink P, Farmer A, Badura T, Coates D, Förster J, Kumar R and Davidson N (2013) The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity for Water and Wetlands IEEP, London and Brussels
ten Brink P, Badura T, Bassi S, Daly E, Dickie I, Ding H, Gantioler S, Gerdes H, Kettunen M, Lago M, Lang S, Markandya A, Nunes PALD, Pieterse M, Rayment M, Tinch R (2011) Estimating the Overall Economic Value of the Benefits provided by the Natura 2000 Network, Final Report to the European Commission
ten Brink P, Mazza L, Badura T, Kettunen M and Withana S (2012) TEEB Nature and its Role in the Transition to a Green Economy IEEP, London and Brussels. (Brief presented at Rio+20 Conference)
Turner K, Badura T, Ferrini S (2019a) Natural Capital Accounting Perspectives: a pragmatic way forward. Ecosystem Health and Sustainability
Turner K, Badura T, Ferrini S (2019b) Valuation, Natural Capital Accounting and Decision-Support Systems: Process, Tools and Methods. Synthesis report to the European Commission
Call for membership 2020
The Call for 2020 memberships is open! Individual memberships are open to individuals who by their profession, training and/or function are involved in environmental and resource economics. By joining IAERE you will become part of a Network including experts from the academia, research centers, companies and public administrations. Memberships are valid for year 2020 until December 31st, 2020, independently from the subscription date. Check your membership status: 2020 short membership directory Renew or Join IAERE for 2020.
8th IAERE Annual Conference 6-7 February 2020, Brescia (Italy)
IAERE is glad to announce its Eighth Annual Conference, to be held at the University of Brescia (Italy) on February 6th-7th, 2020. Registrations are now open!
KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
Christian Gollier, Toulouse School of Economics, France
IAERE special session at the 60th Annual Conference of the Italian Economists Society and Simone Borghesi invited speaker at the final plenary session
A special session entitled "Emerging issues in Environmental Economics" was organized by IAERE on October 24, 2019 at the 60th Annual Conference of the Italian Economists Society held in Palermo.
On October 26, moreover, Simone Borghesi, IAERE President participated as invited speaker to the roundtable on "The challenges for sustainability, policies and economic research" in the final plenary session of the Annual Conference. The keynote speech in the introductory plenary session was by Maurice Obstfeld (University of California, Berkeley).
The program of the Annual Conference is available here.
The IAERE session "Emerging issues in Environmental Economics" took place on October 24th, at 3:20 pm. The following papers were presented: Violent Conflicts, Climate Conditions and Socio-economic Vulnerability in Africa Federica Cappelli, Caterina Conigliani, Valeria Costantini, Keti Lelo, Anil Markandya, Elena Paglialunga, Giorgia Sforna Structural Change and the Environment: Unbundling the Contribution of Structural Change to Sustainable Consumption and Production Giovanni Marin, Massimiliano Mazzanti Waste recycling policies in an E-DSGE model Amedeo Argentiero, Alessio D'Amato, Mariangela Zoli Innovation and Climate Change Adaptation: An Analysis of the Agricultural Firms' Efficiency Sabrina Auci, Nicolò Barbieri, Manuela Coromaldi, Melania Michetti
4th IAERE School (Rome, November 4-7, 2019) Alessio D'Amato and Mariangela Zoli, School Co-coordinators, University of Rome Tor Vergata
The Fourth IAERE School took place in Rome, University of “Tor Vergata”, on November 4-7, 2019. This year’s topic was “Green and Climate Finance”. The School was co-organized by CEIS-Tor Vergata and IAERE. The links between finance and the environment are increasingly acknowledged and discussed in the policy arena, and significant strands of literature are growing in the context of environmental and resource economics. This year’s IAERE School focused on these crucial issues, and specifically on climate financial risks. We are truly indebted to the brilliant Faculty members who kindly accepted to be part of the School Program, and who provided participants with up to date and challenging frontier research issues in the context of the finance-environment nexus: SIMONE BORGHESI (European University Institute and Università di Siena, Italy), MARIANNA BRUNETTI (Università degli Studi di Roma “Tor Vergata”, Italy), EMANUELE CAMPIGLIO (Vienna University of Economics and Business, Austria), PAOLA D’ORAZIO (Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany), IVAN FAIELLA (Banca d’Italia, Italy) IRENE MONASTEROLO (Vienna University of Economics and Business, Austria). 21 participants from eight different countries attended the School. They actively participated in classes, contributing to the lively atmosphere of the School. Sociality and networking were favored both during the classes and by the Social Dinner, held in Frascati, one of the nicest venues in the Roman Hills. We are grateful to lecturers and students, to Antonella and Stefania at CEIS and to Martina at IAERE. All of them contributed to make the School a wonderful and enriching experience.
... and IAERE would like to thank Alessio and Mariangela for their excellent work!
FEEM working papers "Note di lavoro" series
FEEM circulates a series of Working Papers in English (FEEM "Note di lavoro") for an academic readership and collecting the output of research in the field of economics, energy and the environment. FEEM "Note di lavoro" are included in AGECON, the Economics Research Institutes Paper Series of SSRN, REPEC, BERKELEY UNIVERSITY PRESS, ZBW, JSTOR, ECONLIT and in the FACTIVA DOW JONES GLOBAL NEWS DATABASE. The International Standard Serial Number (ISSN) assigned to the online FEEM Note di Lavoro Series is ISSN: 2037-1209. Authors wishing to submit their paper should use the dedicated web submission tool. For additional information please contact the PUBLICATIONS OFFICE.
Master degree in Economics Management and Policies for Global Challenges Curriculum Green Economy and Sustainability University of Ferrara, Italy Call for applications will be open next year
3rd cycle degree entirely taught in English forming graduates who are qualified to assume managerial or consultant positions in the Green Economy sector. The course provides students with interdisciplinary abilities in order to enable them to address issues related to green economy and sustainable development. The main topics of Green economy and sustainability are eco-innovation, green economy and sustainable development. Challenging eco-policy issues - from both national and international perspectives - are studied as well.
Martini F. (in press) Risorse originarie e carattere indiretto della produzione (capitale) nei moderni sistemi di contabilità dell’ambiente Culture della Sostenibilità
CALL FOR PAPERS XI meeting of the Network on the Economics of Regulation and Institutions (NERI) (Naples, Italy, 13-14 February 2020) Deadline for paper submission: 31 December 2019
On February 13th-14th 2020 the Department of Economics and Statistics, University Federico II of Naples, will host the XI meeting of the Network on the Economics of Regulation and Institutions (NERI). The workshop will include an invited session on environmental regulation. Timo Goeschl (Heidelberg University) and Ralf Martin (Imperial College London) have already confirmed their participation. The deadline for paper submission is 31st December 2019. Papers should be submitted to: neri.workshop@gmail.com Submission of papers dealing with all the themes included in the interests of NERI is invited, and the submission of papers on environmental regulation is especially encouraged. Further info at NERI website
CALL FOR PAPERS 2020 International Energy Workshop (Freiburg, Germany, 29 June – 01 July 2020) Deadline for paper submission: 1 February 2020
The 39th edition of the International Energy Workshop (IEW) will be hosted by the Fraunhofer ISE in Freiburg, Germany on 29 June – 01 July, 2020. The IEW is a leading conference for the international energy modelling community. In a world of environmental and economic constraints, energy modelling is an increasingly important tool for addressing the complexity of energy planning and policy making. The IEW provides a venue for scholars and researchers to compare modelling tools, to discuss modelling advances for emerging energy sector issues, and to observe new trends in the global energy sector. Call for Papers - The deadline for paper submission is February 1st, 2020 Researchers and practitioners from countries around the world are invited to submit original papers with new and innovative results on scientific, technical and practical experience on the economics of energy and climate systems. As is customary for the IEW, papers should be quantitative and rigorous. Further info are available at IEW website.
EAERE Magazine: Issue N.7 Fall 2019 is out now
This seventh issue of the European Association of Environmental and Resource
Economists’ new Magazine is all about this year’s Award Winners. After the summer issue, this issue is dedicated to the winners of 2019 Awards and give them the opportunity to present their research and research projects. It starts with the winners of the EAERE Award for ERC Grant laureates. Nadia Ameli, University College London, and her colleagues ask whether increasing transparency about climate-related risks and policies is enough for institutional investors to move funds from brown to green sectors. Nikoleta Jones, University of Cambridge, presents her ERC Starting Grant project that will assess the social impacts of biodiversity conservation policies in Europe. The winner of the Award for the Best Doctoral Dissertation in Environmental Economics, Aurélien Saussay, London School of Economics, writes about the burden of increased gasoline prices for low income households, a topic that has gained attention again since the recent Yellow Vest protests in France. Aude Pommeret, University Savoie Mont Blanc, and Katheline Schubert, Paris School of Economics, are this year’s winner of the Award for Outstanding Publication in ERE. They investigate if banking of emission permits is a suitable tool under uncertainty about future emissions targets and irreversibility of abatement technology adoption. And finally there is the Juniors-ask-Senior interview, this time with the EAERE Fellow Frank J. Convery. Read EAERE Magazine online or download a pdf here.
New European Citizens’ Initiative: A price for carbon to fight climate change
A new European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI) has been launched to ask to EU to improve actions to discourage fossil fuel consumption, encourage energy saving and use of renewable sources. This ECI - promoted by Associazione Lica Coscioni, Eumans, Science for Democracy with the academic support of Alberto Majocchi, Professor of Public Finance at the University of Pavia and one of IAERE honorary member - asks the introduction of a minimum price on CO2 emissions and abolishment of the free allowance system. Revenues shall be used to potentiate renewable sources and reduction of taxes on lower incomes To allocate the higher revenues deriving from carbon pricing to European policies that support energy saving and encourage renewable sources, and to the reduction of taxation on lower incomes. To sign the ECI visit the StopGlobalWarming website.
Climaps - a global issue atlas of climate change adaptation
This website presents the results of the EU research project EMAPS, as well as its process: an experiment to use computation and visualization to harness the increasing availability of digital data and mobilize it for public debate. To do so, EMAPS gathered a team of social and data scientists, climate experts and information designers. It also reached out beyond the walls of Academia and engaged with the actors of the climate debate. Further info at the Climaps website.
Climate Action Tracker
The Climate Action Tracker is an independent scientific analysis that tracks government climate action and measures it against the globally agreed Paris Agreement aim of "holding warming well below 2°C, and pursuing efforts to limit warming to 1.5°C." A collaboration of two organisations, Climate Analytics and New Climate Institute, the CAT has been providing this independent analysis to policymakers since 2009. Further info at the Climate Action Tracker website.
Young Scientists Summer Program 2020 International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Laxenburg, Austria Deadline: 11 January 2020
From 1 June to 31 August, IIASA annually hosts up to 50 doctoral students from around the world in its Young Scientists Summer Program (YSSP) in Austria. PhD students are offered fellowships to undertake a summer project on a topic related to the IIASA research agenda. IASA is an international research institute based near Vienna, Austria. A global leader in systems analysis, IIASA conducts policy-oriented, multidisciplinary research into challenges that are too large or complex to be solved by a single country or discipline. These challenges, which include climate change,energy security, and sustainable development, must be solved by international cooperation. Further information at the YSSP page
Italian Association of Environmental and Resource Economists - IAERE
Porta dell'Innovazione Building - 2nd Floor Via della Libertà 12, 30175 Marghera-Venice, Italy
Dear IAERE community,
Italy
A special session entitled "Emerging issues in Environmental Economics" was organized by IAERE on October 24, 2019 at the 60th Annual Conference of the Italian Economists Society held in Palermo.
Italian Association of Environmental and Resource Economists - IAERE
I write these few lines to send you my greetings to the whole IAERE community since my term as President of the Association is about to finish at the end of the year. 
The Fourth IAERE School took place in Rome, University of “Tor Vergata”, on November 4-7, 2019. This year’s topic was “Green and Climate Finance”. The School was co-organized by CEIS-Tor Vergata and IAERE.
FEEM circulates a series of Working Papers in English (FEEM "Note di lavoro") for an academic readership and collecting the output of research in the field of economics, energy and the environment.
On February 13th-14th 2020 the Department of Economics and Statistics, University Federico II of Naples, will host the XI meeting of the Network on the Economics of Regulation and Institutions (NERI).
