Sustainable Development Seminar II

This course is restricted to PhD in Sustainable Development

• F 10 a.m.-11 a.m.
• Instructor: Douglas V Almond
  Info
• 1.5 points

Collective Action for Global Sustainable

Collective Action-Global

When externalities go uncorrected, and public goods go undersupplied, the reason is not that the market fails; the reason is that governments are unable or unwilling to intervene effectively. The biggest problem is with transnational externalities and regional and global public goods. This is partly because of the scale of these problems, but it is also because the institutional arrangements at this level make effective intervention difficult. There is no World Government. Instead, there are around 200 sovereign states. To support sustainable development globally, states must cooperate, and yet states' self-interests often conflict with their collective interests. This is why all countries agree that collective action must be taken to limit climate change, and yet, though they try and try again, countries seem unable to muster the individual action needed to meet their own collective goal. The aim of this course is to develop an apparatus for understanding international collective action for sustainable development. By an apparatus, I mean a theory, a structured way of looking at and understanding the world. Rather than just present the theory, my aim is to show you why theory is needed, how it has been constructed, and what its strengths and weaknesses are. Basically, in addition to teaching you principles and tools, I want you to come to see how this field has developed, what it has achieved, and where it has fallen short. Throughout the course, we shall also be looking at tests and applications of the theory-empirical and experimental papers in addition to case studies. The course draws from a number of disciplines, especially economics, game theory (analytical and experimental), and international relations-but also international law, philosophy, history, the natural and physical sciences, and engineering. The focus will be on institutions, and the way that they restructure the relations among states to cause states to behave differently-that is, to cause them to undertake collective action. In terms of applications, the course will address not only climate change but also depletion of the ozone layer, trans-boundary air pollution, pollution of the oceans, over-fishing, biodiversity loss, and the emergence and spread of infectious diseases.

• W 1:10 p.m.-3 p.m.
• Instructor: Scott Barrett
  Wikipedia Info
• 3 points

Causal Inference Workshop

This 14-week workshop designed for the students in the PhD program in Sustainable Development covers the fundamental theory and techniques of causal inference.  Specifically tailored to  students trained  in econometrics and positioned to conduct interdisciplinary research, it systematically ties back the econometrics approaches covered to the underlying statistical framework and provides the students with  the tools to conduct rigorous empirical analyses, and share and defend their approach in front of both economics and non-economics audiences. Lower-year students  learn the fundamental methods for observational studies, upper-year students discuss how they employ them in their own current research. Participants are presented with the most common methods in the field, their limitations, and best practices, and introduced to underused statistical methods for causal inference.

• F 9 a.m.-10 a.m.
• Instructor: Suresh Naidu
  Wikipedia h-index: 26 Info
• 1.5 points