5–19 May 2019 

Application Deadline: 22 February 2019

The South Asian Network for Development and Environmental Economics (SANDEE), an initiative of the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) under its Regional Programme on Mountain Knowledge and Action Networks, is organizing a fifteen-day Summer School on Environmental and Natural Resource Economics from 5–19 May 2019. The main objective of the Summer School is to provide economists the basic skills necessary to teach and conduct research in environmental and natural resource economics. The course is for practicing economists from South Asia and the Hindu Kush Himalayan (HKH) region interested in enhancing their knowledge of the interlinkages between economic development, poverty, and the environment. The Summer School has been designed to enable participants to develop research proposals that they can later submit to SANDEE.

What can you expect from the Summer School?

The course will cover economic issues underlying sustainable development, externalities and market failure, policy instruments, non-market valuation, poverty-environment interactions, and natural resource use and pollution management. Participants will be exposed to theoretical issues and economic tools such as experimental economics and other relevant methodologies for analyzing environmental problems in developing countries. 

Who will teach the course?

The course will be taught by:

• Maximillian Auffhammer, Professor, University of California, Berkley
• Randall Bluffstone, Professor, Portland State University
• Sir Partha Dasgupta, Frank Ramsey Professor Emeritus, Cambridge University
• Lata Gangadharan, Professor, Monash University
• AK Enamul Haque, Professor, East-West University
• Mani Nepal, Programme Coordinator, SANDEE and Lead Economist, ICIMOD 
• Joyashree Roy, Professor, Asian Institute of Technology

Additional guest speakers will be invited depending on their need and availability. 

Organization

Mani Nepal (Programme Coordinator, SANDEE and Lead Economist, ICIMOD) is the course director and Neesha Pradhan (Programme Associate, SANDEE) will administer the course.  

Who should attend the course?

The ideal participant has a Master’s degree/PhD in economics and a good understanding of microeconomics, calculus, and basic econometrics. Junior and mid-career faculty and researchers – especially women working in member universities of the Himalayan University Consortium (HUC) – are encouraged to apply. Priority will be given to junior to mid-career university teachers and researchers who have submitted a research proposal to SANDEE on issues related to environmental and resource economics. Those who have already had training in environmental and resource economics through other programmes or universities, or are likely to go overseas for higher education within the next year are not eligible.  

What are you expected to do during the course?

The SANDEE Summer School is a residential teaching workshop. Participants are expected to read up on the topic of each day’s lecture beforehand, and participate in individual and group assignments and discussions. Working days, on occasion, will extend from 9 am–9 pm or beyond based on assignment demands. Participants are required to present an empirical paper and a research concept note during the Summer School. Last year’s Summer School agenda is available here.

Funding

SANDEE will provide a scholarship of USD 3,500 per participant to cover course materials, international travel, meals, and accommodation during the Summer School (no cash). Participants are responsible for local travel arrangements, travel insurance, visa fee, and other personal expenses. Shortlisted participants are required to pay a small registration fee of USD 250 to confirm their participation.   

Venue

The Summer School will be held at the Asian Institute of Technology in Thailand. The participants should arrive on 4 May and depart on 20 May 2019.  

Application process

Interested and eligible candidates from South Asia and the HKH region are requested to submit their application onlineand upload the following documents in PDF: 

• A one-page cover letter indicating how such a course will be useful in the applicant’s teaching and research activities, their exposure to basic mathematics (e.g., calculus, linear algebra) and computing skills (e.g., spread sheet, statistical software), and the name of the person nominating him/her (if any). 
• A three-page research concept note (a precursor of a research proposal) on issues related to environmental and resource economics in South Asia and the HKH. The concept note should include a discussion of the research problem and its policy relevance, a clear research question(s), an analytical framework, a short literature review that discusses at least three key peer-reviewed journal articles related to the proposed analytical framework, empirical methods (data requirement, collection, and analysis) and expected outcomes.
• A brief CV (no more than one page) indicating professional responsibilities/activities, (please include current job and institutional details), educational qualifications, (highest degree/institution), age, and two most important research publications, if any, current teaching responsibility (if relevant). 

Please submit your application by 22 February 2019. We request you to pass this information along to interested colleagues. We are also seeking nominations from colleagues who have been part of SANDEE activities. Approximately 20–24 participants will be invited to the Summer School.   

Faculty Profile

Maximilian Auffhammer is the George Pardee Jr Professor of International Sustainable Development and Associate Dean in the Division of Social Sciences at UC Berkeley. He received his PhD in economics from UC San Diego. His research focuses on environmental and resource economics, energy economics, and applied econometrics. He is a lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Prof. Auffhammer serves as Co-Editor of the Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists and is a recipient of the 2007 Cozzarelli Prize awarded by the National Academies of Sciences, and the 2007 Sarlo Distinguished Mentoring Award.

Randall Bluffstone is Professor of Economics and Director of the Institute for Economics and the Environment at Portland State University. His research and teaching interests focus on environmental and resource economics, including climate change, energy, pollution control, and deforestation in low-income countries. Prof. Bluffstone is associate editor of the journal Forest Economics, a research associate of the Environment for Development (EfD) Initiative, and co-coordinator of the EfD Forest Collaborative.  In 2017–2018 Bluffstone was a Fulbright Senior Scholar in Nepal.  Prior to joining Portland State, he taught at the University of Redlands and until September 1999 was deputy director of the International Environment Program at the Harvard Institute for International Development (HIID) at Harvard University. While at Harvard, Bluffstone directed HIID’s environmental policy programme in Central Asia, and from 1994 to 1997 served as senior environmental policy advisor to the Government of Lithuania. Randall Bluffstone received his PhD in economics from Boston University, and from 1983 to 1985 was a Peace Corps volunteer in Nepal. 

Sir Partha Dasgupta is the Frank Ramsey Professor Emeritus in Economics at Cambridge University. He has also taught at the London School of Economics and Stanford University. He is the first economist to be elected a fellow of the Royal Society.  Prof. Dasgupta is a co-founder of SANDEE. He is a member of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences and foreign member of the US National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, American Philosophical Society, and Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. He is an honorary fellow of the London School of Economics and Trinity College (Cambridge). He has received the Volvo Environment Prize (2002), the John Kenneth Galbraith Prize (2006), the Zayed International Environment Prize (2011), the Blue Planet Prize (2015), and the Tyler Prize (2016). Prof Dasgupta has been awarded honorary doctorates by Harvard University, Wageningen University, University of Bologna, Tilberg University, Catholic University of Louvain, and the University of York.

Lata Gangadharan is Professor of Economics and holds the Joe Isaac Chair in Business and Economics at Monash University, Australia. Her research focuses on understanding and designing appropriate institutions for the environment and for development. She is Co-Editor of Experimental Economics and a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia. Prof. Gangadharan is an experimental economist, and has conducted laboratory and field experiments to examine incentives in environmental markets, attitudes towards peer punishment to solve environmental dilemmas, propensity for corruption in different countries, and impact of gender, norms, and social identity. Her research has been published in journals such as the American Economic Review, Science, Nature Communications, European Economic Review, Journal of Public Economics, Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, and the American Journal of Agricultural Economics.

Enamul Haque is Professor at East-West University, a private university in Dhaka, Bangladesh, and Executive Director, Asian Center for Development. He has Master’s degrees in Economics and Agricultural Economics. He completed his doctoral degree from the University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada in Natural Resource Economics. Prof. Haque has been a SANDEE faculty advisor for many years. 

Mani Nepal is SANDEE Programme Coordinator and Lead Economist at ICIMOD. He manages SANDEE’s research activities, co-ordinates trainings, and mentors SANDEE researchers. He has served as Adjunct Professor at the Agriculture and Forestry University and Associate Professor at Tribhuvan University in Nepal; Assistant Professor at the University of New Mexico, USA; and Visiting Professor at Kathmandu University. He has also held the position of Senior Economist at the Department of Finance and Administration, Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA. He has a MS degree in Policy Economics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and doctoral degree from the University of New Mexico in Environmental/Development Economics and Applied Econometrics. 

Joyashree Roy is the inaugural Bangabandhu Chair Professor at AIT, Thailand. She has been with the Department of Economics, Jadavpur University, India and is a National Fellow of the Indian Council of Social Sciences Research (ICSSR). She was the Ford Foundation Post Doctoral Fellow at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley, USA. She is Founding Advisor of the Global Change Programme and Ryoichi Sasakawa Young Leaders Fellowship Fund (SYLFF) Project at Jadavpur University. She was part of the IPCC-2007 Nobel Peace Prize winning team and continues to serve as Coordinating Lead Author of Working Group III of the IPCC. She has been a chapter author of Global Energy Assessment and part of the winning team of the Prince Sultan Bin Aziz award for water. She has published more than 100 peer-reviewed journal articles on issues related to environmental and energy economics.

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