In the ERC project Behavioral-evolutionary analysis of climate policy: Bounded rationality, markets and social interactions (EVOCLIM) seven research positions are now formally advertised on Euraxess.

Suitable candidates have a background in economics, mathematics, computer science, psychology or biology.

The project starts 1st of January 2018.

More details about the project can be found here: http://ictaweb.uab.cat/noticies_news_detail.php?id=3368

 

Three postdoc positions are offered:

• https://euraxess.ec.europa.eu/jobs/243581 (5-year position)
• https://euraxess.ec.europa.eu/jobs/244962 (5-year position)
• https://euraxess.ec.europa.eu/jobs/244979 (3-year position)

Four PhD-student (4-year) positions are offered as well:

–       https://euraxess.ec.europa.eu/jobs/244996

 

Prof. Jeroen van den Bergh’s project “Behavioral-evolutionary analysis of climate policy: Bounded rationality, markets and social interactions” (EVOCLIM), awarded with a prestigious ERC Advanced Grant, offers three postdoc positions (two of 5 years and one of 3 years) and five PhD research positions (each 4 years). The project will run as of January 2018 for a period of 5 years.
Project description
The project will develop a new set of models to assess the performance of policy instruments – such as various carbon pricing and information provision instruments – in terms of employment, equity and CO2 emissions. Currently, distinct climate policies are studied with incomparable approaches involving inconsistent criteria and impacts. EVOCLIM aims to unite core features of such approaches within a behavioral-evolutionary framework, blending insights from behavioral, environmental and evolutionary economics. The key novelty is linking climate policies to populations of heterogeneous consumers and producers characterized by bounded rationality and social interactions. This offers three advantages: one can evaluate the effectiveness of very different climate policy instruments in a consistent and comparative way; one can examine policy mixes by considering interaction between instruments from a behavioral as well as systemic perspective; and one can simultaneously assess policy impacts mediated by markets and social networks.

EVOCLIM will be guided by the following goals: (i) test the robustness of insights on carbon pricing from benchmark approaches that assume representative, rational agents; (ii) test contested views on joint employment-climate effects of shifting taxes from labor to carbon; (iii) examine various instruments of information provision under distinct assumptions about social preferences, interactions and networks; (iv) study regulation of commercial advertising as a climate policy option in the context of status-seeking and high-carbon consumption; and (v) explore behavioral roots of energy/carbon rebound. The research has a general, conceptual-theoretical rather than a particular country focus. Given the complexity of the developed models, it involves numerical analyses with parameter values in realistic ranges, partly supported by insights from questionnaire-based surveys among consumers and firms. One survey examines information provision instruments and social interaction channels, while another assesses behavioral foundations of rebound.

Broader scientific meaning of the project
EVOCLIM is ground-breaking in that it develops the first systematic program on behavioral-evolutionary thinking about climate policy. This creates bridges between environmental economics, behavioral economics, evolutionary economics and modelling, policy sciences, sociology and environmental psychology. It will support a consistent comparison of the full range of regulatory (both pricing and standard-setting) and information-provisioning instruments in climate policy. The project can further provide useful methodological lessons for other areas of public policy from an evolutionary systems angle. In addition, it may broaden the scope of evolutionary economics which so far has paid scant attention to environmental and climate policies. In particular, it contributes to a wave of macro-oriented evolutionary, multi-agent models, which serve as an alternative to both general equilibrium and mainstream macroeconomic models in public policy and economic analyses. The approach will further contribute to the field of energy/sustainability transition studies.

Positions and requirements
The organization of EVOCLIM in terms of sub-projects (SPs) is shown in the scheme below. The project will fund three postdoc positions (two of 5 years in SP1 and SP5, and one of 3 years in SP4) and four PhD researchers (each 4 years, in SP2 and SP3). Cooperation and synergies between the sub-projects will be secured by the two integrative sub-projects SP1 and SP5. The first of these develops the framework and basic models, and can be seen to assure consistency and synergy of SPs at a methodological level. Next, SP5 guides the survey questionnaires and integrates the policy insights produced by the other SPs, on the basis of which it further develops and analyses policy packages.

WU offers the following position
PostDoc position for Geographer/Geo-Informatics
for the geospatial assessment of global raw material extraction and related environmental and social impacts

Position initially limited to 3 years; 30-40 h/week Starting on January 1st, 2018 Gross monthly salary (full-time basis): 3,627 € (14 salaries/year)

Background
The research group “Sustainable Resource Use” at the Institute for Ecological Economics of WU Vienna is one of the leading European groups in the areas of natural resource accounting and indicators, modeling, and assessments focusing on materials, water, and land use.

This position is part of the ERC Consolidator Grant project FINEPRINT (Spatially explicit material footprints: fine-scale assessment of Europe’s global environmental and social impacts), led by Dr. Stefan Giljum. FINEPRINT develops and applies a new method for fine-scale assessments of global material flows, in order to perform spatially explicit analyses of material footprints and related environmental and social impacts of European consumption.

Responsibilities
You will be leading Work Package 1 of the FINEPRINT project, which will perform world-wide geospatial assessments of raw material extraction and related environmental and social impacts. You will be responsible for establishing an integrated and consistent framework of detailed spatial accounts of material extraction (of at least 60 different raw materials including agricultural, forestry and fishery products, fossil fuels, metal ores and non-metallic minerals) and related environmental and social data (e.g. deforestation, species occurrence, water scarcity, social conflicts). Together with the other members of the WP 1 team, you will collect, validate and quality-control a large number of spatial and non-spatial global and regional datasets with a variety of data formats. Your tasks will also include the production of global crop and forest harvest maps based on, e.g. available land use and crop suitability data. You will then perform quantitative-statistical and qualitative analyses of the relations between trends and patterns of raw material
See https://www.wu.ac.at/en/ecolecon/research/sustainable-resource-use/erc-fineprint for more information about the FINEPRINT project.
extraction and related environmental impacts, such as water scarcity and deforestation, as well as social impacts, such as local conflicts related to mining projects.
As WP 1 leader, you will head a small research team, consisting of 1-2 pre-doc researchers, a technical assistant as well as a research assistant. You will also work closely with the members of the overall FINEPRINT team, consisting of a total of 9 persons.
You are expected to publish scientific results in high-impact journals.
In addition to research, teaching activities on the bachelor level might be arranged.
The post holder will also be invited to contribute to the writing of grant proposals that, when successful, might provide funding to achieve full-time employment and to extend the post-doc position to a period longer than three years.

Your profile
Applicants should have:
 A doctoral degree or PhD in Geography, Geo-Informatics or related subjects. (We also want to encourage experienced Pre-Doc applicants, who meet the requirements of the announced position.)
 Profound experience in handling and automated processing of large-scale, global (geo)data (sources, structure, data types, quality evaluation, scripting/programming in R, Python or other languages).
 Experience in building and working with (geo)databases.
 Strong skills in the area of spatial statistics (e.g. cluster analysis, multivariate regression).
 Interest in assessing and ability to grasp the interrelations between raw material extraction and related impacts.
 Excellent written and communication skills in English (knowledge of German welcome but not required).
Applications are accepted until November 1, 2017. Note that a slightly different starting date could be negotiated.

All applications should include:
 Cover letter describing your motivation, research interests & relevant experience
 Detailed curriculum vitae in tabular form
 A sample of your work representative for the job description
Reference Number: 3439
Candidates must apply through the WU online system: https://www.wu.ac.at/en/careers/careers-at-wu/current-job-openings/

Travel and lodging expenses:
We regret that WU cannot reimburse applicants for travel and lodging expenses incurred as part of the selection and/or hiring process.

Equal opportunities:
WU is an Equal Opportunity Employer and seeks to increase the number of its female faculty and staff members, especially in management positions. Therefore qualified women are strongly encouraged to apply. In case of equal qualification, female candidates will be given preference. WU has established a Committee for Equal Treatment, which is involved in all selection proceedings pursuant to § 42 of the 2002 Universities Act.