Mathematics and the Environment: Energy Risk, Environmental Uncertainty and Public Decision Making (07ss081)

Objectives

In a time of of growing environmental concerns and the chance to enhance the development of effective mathematical methods and techniques to model climate risks and public decision making in the presence of environmental uncertainty is truly compelling. This summer school brings together graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and young faculty members from economics, mathematics and the social sciences with leading economists and mathematicians. It will

- expose young environmental and natural resource economists to mathematical methods and techniques needed in their field;

- expose mathematicians to new mathematical problems arising in environmental and resource economics; and

- bring together mathematicians and environmental and resource economists to discuss recent progress in the mathematical modeling climate and energy related risk factors.

The focus will be on a set of five courses, each taught by world leaders in the corresponding discipline. The courses and lecturers include:

- Rene Carmona (Princeton University): Energy markets: natural gas, electricity, temperature and physical asset valuation;

- Christian Gollier (Toulouse University): Public decision making for environmental uncertainties;

- Roger Guesnerie (College de France): tba;

- Tan Wang (University of British Columbia): Design of risk measures;

- Roger Wets (UC Davis): A constructive approach to deterministic and stochastic equilibrium problems of the Walras type.

The courses will be complemented by introductory seminar presentations on stochastic climate models and trade, growth and the environment.

The summer school is accompanied by a research workshop. Both events are jointly organized by the DFG Research Center MATHEON (www.matheon.de) and the Pacific Institute for the Mathematical Sciences (www.pims.math.ca).

Questions about the summer school or workshop should be emailed to Ulrich Horst (horst AT math DOT ubc DOT ca).