Overview

​For the final version of the program, click here.

For some practical information, click here.

Course Venue: SLU Umea Campus, Classroom Aspen

​The course aims to provide understanding of topics in environmental and resource economics from a behavioural economics perspective. Students will learn how to apply the theory and the methods such as field and laboratory experiments to the environmental issues to discover how individuals actually behave, and how normative theories and frameworks fail to capture the actual behaviour.

There is no tuition fee. Students are expected to cover their own costs of travel, accommodation, etc.

​​Masters and PhD

7.5 ECTS

Lectures take place before lunchtime, after lunchtime student seminars and discussions take place.

​The course especially invites graduate students who are working on topics in environmental economics from a behavioural economics perspective. Master students, early career researchers and students from other fields of social sciences are also welcomed to participate in the course.

The course is specifically aimed at PhD students within the field of social sciences in particular economics. Knowledge in basic microeconomics and good knowledge in English is vital to be able to follow the course.

11 June 2018 - 14 June 2018; SLU, Umeå, Sweden

Application

While applying for the course, each student will be asked to write a max. 300 words text describing their current work and research interests. The text will be used in selection process and if accepted to allocate the student's seminar to the related section. Note that the accepted students who doesnot have their own work to present will be asked to select a paper from the reading list to present. This option is especially set for the Master level students to enable them to apply for the course.

Send your CV and a letter (max. 300 words) describing your research interests via email until 3 May 2018. (APPLICATIONS ARE CLOSED)

Course page on university website

Lecturers

Arild Angelsen is a professor of economics at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU). He has over the past two decades done extensive research and published on causes of tropical deforestation, and its interaction with poverty, tenure and government policies. Recent work deals with how efforts to Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD+) can be included in a global climate regime, and the national strategies and policies needed to achieve REDD+. He has edited three REDD+ books that have become standard references in the debate. Angelsen was global coordinator of the Poverty Environment Network (PEN), a CIFOR-led research programme collecting detailed information from 8 000 households in 24 developing countries on forest uses and management. He has also used field experiments to study human behaviour and the impact of policy interventions for sustainable resource use. He has broad field experience from Southeast Asia and Eastern Africa, and is editor of a book on field research methods. Personal Web

Eline van der Heijden is Professor of Experimental Economics and member of the Tilburg Sustainability Center at Tilburg University. She began conducting experiments research during her promotion research and has since then done experimental and behavioral research on a wide range of subjects such as public goods and other social dilemma situations, the role of time, risk and social preferences in behavior, and leadership. She has experience with lab experiments, with large scale online experiments among a representative sample of the Dutch population, as well as field experiments. Van der Heijden uses these experiments to answer more fundamental research questions, but also to study more applied policy questions for various Dutch ministries, the OECD and the EU. In the past five years she has conducted a number of experimental lab and field studies in the field of environmental economics, including research into investments in energy-efficient technologies for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), households in the field of sustainable consumption, dynamic coordination games, and payments for ecosystem services schemes. Personal Web

Dr. Sara le Roux is a Senior Lecturer in Economics at Oxford Brookes University. Her main research interests include the theoretical and experimental analysis of individual’s perception of ambiguity and decision choices made by individuals in the presence of ambiguity. Currently a number of policy questions involve ambiguity, in particular, potential threats resulting from climate change and environmental damage. Dr. le Roux uses experiments to analyse whether individuals make optimal decisions when faced by uncertain weather events, and if individuals can be “nudged” towards making better decisions. Personal Web

Personal Web

Chandra Kiran Krishnamurthy is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Forest Economics, and a member of the Center for Environmental and Resource Economics (CERE), a collaborative research center between Umeå University and the SLU at Umeå, Sweden. His research covers many areas in environmental and resource economics, with a particular focus: on investigating optimal management of natural resources such as water; understanding aspects of consumer behaviour related household energy and water consumption; and in better understanding and modelling the climate-economy linkages. Personal Web

Personal Web

Personal Web

Content

The first day of the course sets fundamentals about behavioral economics via a detailed introduction about the behavioral biases and examples of experiments. The first day also introduces some specific illustrations and real-world examples such as individual consumption and extraction decisions for how the postulated simple rational behavior can differ in reality from expectations. Attention will be drawn to the challenges involved in identifying deviations from basic rationality assumption and “conditioning factors” involved in many contexts.

Second and the third day focusses on laboratory experiments and the third day also includes guest speakers on relevant topics such as conspicuous consumption. Overall, these two days will provide information to students about how they can use laboratory experiments to investigate the environmental economics issues. Prof. Eline van der Heijden’s lecture starts with a short introduction to several types of environmental problems and briefly reviews how some of these environmental social dilemmas have been studied experimentally and discusses some recent contributions, both of lab and field experiments. Then, discussing some specific topics in more detail: cooperation in (dynamic) coordination games, provision of environmental conversation by means of payments for ecosystem services, the role of leadership. Focus is on instruments that can be used to improve coordination and cooperation.

Third day includes a lecture beginning with a short introduction to the concept of Equilibrium under Ambiguity (EUA). Then the lecture proceeds to apply the equilibrium concept to analyze games that simulate the effects of climate change in various choice situations: Mitigation: We will firstly model the ambiguity countries face while coordinating in a manner that would mitigate harmful emissions that cause climate change. Adaptation: Next we will study the effects of ambiguity on individuals deciding whether to invest in infrastructure that will adapt to the harmful effects of climate change, such that they can prevent losses due to climate change catastrophes. Insurance: Finally, alongside mitigation and adaptation mechanisms, we must consider insuring optimally in the face of ambiguous climate change catastrophes that can be viewed as low probability/high impact events.

The fourth day focusses on Framed Field Experiments (FFEs): Since 2000 (Cardenas), a series of FFEs on natural resource use and management in developing countries have been conducted. FFEs have, compared to lab experiments, a realistic task (e.g. harvesting of trees) with a relevant population (e.g. real forest users) and conducted in the participants’ natural environment. The experiments are usually framed as a common pool resource game (CPR), creating a social dilemma between individual collective payoffs. The lecture aims to, first, give a broad overview of FFEs, some typical resource management situations, and possible policies. Second, it will summarize the experimental studies and the main (policy) conclusions that can be drawn from these.