GTAP Events: 14th Annual Conference on Global Economic Analysis: Plenary Speakers
Market and Finance (Thursday, June 16)Thomas C. Heller, "What Works in Climate Change?"
An expert in law, economic development and the performance of legal institutions, Thomas C. Heller has focused his research on the rule of law, international climate control, global energy use, and the interaction of government and nongovernmental organizations in establishing legal structures in the developing world. Since 1979, Heller has been a professor at Stanford University, where he has served as the Shelton Professor of International Legal Studies, Senior Fellow at the Stanford Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and Senior Fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment. Since 1991, Heller has been increasingly engaged in research and applied policy studies in energy and climate, with a principal concern with developments in China, India, Mexico, Brazil and other leading emerging markets. He has been a contributing lead author for the IPCC on the Third and Fourth Assessment Reports, as well as a contributor to the Special Reports on Technology Transfer and Emissions Scenarios. Beginning in 2008, Heller has been a core team member directing Project Catalyst—an analysis based project in support of the Copenhagen Climate process.
From September 2009, he has served as Executive Director of a new non-governmental organization, the Climate Policy Initiative (CPI), based in San Francisco with offices in Europe, Asia and Latin America. CPI will assess, evaluate and advise governments and private firms on the implementation of national low carbon growth plans and measures, with particular attention to the fit between regulatory and public expenditure policies, infrastructure financing, and industrial organization in the key sectors relevant to energy, land use and climate change.
Since March 2010, Professor Heller has also acted as the Vice-Chair of the Governing Board of the Global Green Growth Institute, with headquarters in Seoul, Korea.
Brian Wright, "The Economics of Grain Price Volatility"
Brian Wright's interests in economics uncertainty and innovation date from his early experiences on his family's sheep station in the Riverina district of New South Wales, Australia. He received a Bachelor of Agricultural Economics (First Class honors) from the University of New England, Armidale, and won one of two Frank Knox Fellowships given annually to Australian students by Harvard University, where he received an A.M. and Ph.D. in Economics. He then joined Yale University's Economics Department and is now Chair of the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics at the University of California, Berkeley.
His research interests include economics of markets for storable commodities, market stabilization, agricultural policy, industrial organization, public finance, invention incentives, intellectual property rights, the economics of research and development, and the economics of conservation and innovation of genetic resources. He co-authored or co-edited several books, including Storage and Commodity Markets; Reforming Agricultural Commodity Policy; Saving Seeds: The Economics of Conserving Genetic Resources at the CGIAR Centers, and Accessing Biodiversity and Sharing the Benefits: Lessons from Implementing the Convention on Biodiversity. He has published extensively in the leading journals in Economics and Agricultural Economics. In addition, he has co-authored articles in Nature Biotechnology, The Handbook of Plant Biotechnology, and Crop Science.
Brian Wright is a Fellow of the American Agricultural Economics Association and has served as the economist member of the Subcommittee on Proprietary Science and Technology of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). He served on the Committee on Intellectual Property in Genomic and Protein Research and Innovation of the National Academies' Board of Science, Technology and Economic Policy. He has recently collaborated with the Research Center for Property Exchange of Peking University. Last June, at the request of the World Bank, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, he gave a technical presentation at the World Grain Forum, Petersburg, Russia, on the use of international grain reserves for market stabilization. In October 2010, he presented an invited paper on agricultural innovation at the Washington, DC National Bureau of Economic Research meeting on Accelerating Innovation in Energy: Lessons from Other Sectors? He subsequently presented invited lectures on grain markets and their stabilization at the World Bank, the Milken Institute, and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.
Climate Change (Friday, June 17)
Henry D. Jacoby, "The Evolving Challenge of Climate Studies"
Henry D. Jacoby is Professor of Management in the M.I.T. Sloan School of Management and former Co-Director of the M.I.T. Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, which is a world leader in integration of the natural and social sciences and policy analysis in application to the threat of global climate change. He oversees the design and application of the social science component of the Joint Program's Integrated Global System Model – a comprehensive research tool for analyzing potential anthropogenic climate change and its social and environmental consequences – and he is a leader of M.I.T. research and analysis of national climate policies and the structure of the international climate regime.
An undergraduate mechanical engineer at the University of Texas at Austin, Professor Jacoby holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University where he also served on the faculties of the Department of Economics and the Kennedy School of Government. He has been Director of the Harvard Environmental Systems Program, Director of the MIT Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research, Associate Director of the MIT Energy Laboratory, and Chair of the MIT Faculty. He has made extensive contributions to the study of economics, policy and management in the areas of energy, natural resources and environment, writing widely on these topics including seven books. He currently serves on the Scientific Committee of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Program.
Christoph Böhringer, "EU Climate Policy: (Some) Issues At Stake"
Christoph Böhringer is full professor at the University of Oldenburg since 2007. Between 1999-2007 he was head of the research department "Environmental and Resource Economics, Environmental Management" at the Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW) in Mannheim. He studied engineering at the University of Karlsruhe and received his PhD in economics from the University of Stuttgart in 1995. Between 1995-1998 he supervised the research group "Energy Economics" at IER (Institute of Energy Economics), University of Stuttgart. In 2002, he received his habilitation and venia legendi in economics from the University of Regensburg. In 2004, he has been appointed as a full professor at the University of Heidelberg. His research focuses on the impact analysis of environmental, energy and trade policies. He has widely published in peer-reviewed international journals on these topics.
Growth, Development and Poverty (Saturday, June 18)
Shanta Devarajan, "Can CGE Models End Poverty?"
Shantayanan (Shanta) Devarajan, who was born in Sri Lanka, joined the World Bank in 1991. He assumed his current position as Chief Economist of the World Bank's Africa Region in 2008. The office of the Chief Economist seeks to bring the best knowledge to bear on the development problems of Africa, while providing guidance to Bank staff and management on strategy and the quality of economic analysis.
Prior to this assignment, from 2004 onwards, Shanta was Chief Economist for the South Asia Region position, following three years as Chief Economist for the Human Development Network, which covers areas such as health, education, nutrition and population. Earlier positions include Principal Economist and Research Manager for Public Economics in the Development Research Group. He was the Director of the World Development Report 2004: Making Services Work for Poor People.
Before joining the Bank, Shanta was on the faculty at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. The author and co-author of over 100 publications, Mr. Devarajan's research covers public economics, trade policy, natural resources, and the environment, and general equilibrium modeling of developing countries. He currently disseminates his and other people's ideas on his blog, http://africacan.worldbank.org.
Mr. Devarajan received his B.A. in mathematics from Princeton University and his Ph.D. in economics from the University of California, Berkeley. He speaks French fluently.
Thomas Sterner, "Green Growth - Post-Copenhagen"
Thomas Sterner is a professor of environmental economics in Gothenburg and a university fellow at RFF. He has initiated the unit for environmental economics in Gothenburg and participated in its build-up since 1990. He is past President of the European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists. Thomas Sterner’s main research interests lie in the design of policy instruments. He has written a large number of books and articles on different applications ranging from energy and climate, through natural resource management such as fisheries to issues relating to industrial and transport pollution. His work covers institutions in different kinds of economies, market, planned and developing. Thomas Sterner teaches PhD and undergraduate courses in environmental and resource economics and is also active in a number of boards and networks such as CEEPA, LACEEP, SANDEE, and AERC.
Last Modified: 3/2/2018 10:02:53 AM
