Jevgenijs Steinbuks

/

Economist

Development Research Group

World Bank

Areas of Expertise:

  • Global land use modeling
  • Energy demand and efficiency
  • Applied computational economics and econometrics

Steinbuks is a research associate in the Center for Global Trade Analysis at Purdue University, the home of the Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP), where he currently works on an optimal allocation of global land use under uncertainty and irreversibility constraints. His other research interests include the economic analysis of energy and climate policies, energy efficiency, inter-fuel substitution, renewable energy and the electric power. Steinbuks has an extensive experience in a variety of applied computational and econometric methods.

Before joining the Center for Global Trade Analysis, he was a researcher at the Electricity Policy Research Group, University of Cambridge, and served as a consultant to the World Bank. Steinbuks received his PhD in Economics from the George Washington University in 2008.

Research Projects

FABLE

recent publications
Hertel, Thomas, Jevgenijs Steinbuks, and Uris Baldos. "Competition for Land in the Global Bioeconomy" (September 10, 2012). RDCEP Working Paper No. 12-12.
T. W. Hertel, J. Steinbuks, W.E. Tyner . What is the social value of second generation biofuels? Applied Economic Perspectives and Policies, forthcoming, 2015.
Hertel, Thomas, Jevgenijs Steinbuks, and Uris Baldos. "Competition for land in the global bioeconomy." Agricultural Economics 44, no. s1 (2013): 129-138.
Thomas W Hertel, Jevgenijs Steinbuks, and Wallace E Tyner. What is the social value of second generation biofuels? Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy, page ppv027, 2015.
Steinbuks, Jevgenijs. "Energy prices will drive global land use in the 21st century." Environmental Research Web, April 2013. Insight Article.
Steinbuks, Jevgenijs, and Govinda R. Timilsina. "Land-use change and food supply." The Impacts of Biofuels on the Economy, Environment, and Poverty, Springer New York. (2014): 91-102.
Jevgenijs Steinbuks and Thomas W. Hertel. Confronting the food-energy-environment trilemma: Global land use in the long run. forthcoming in Environmental and Resource Economics, 2015
Steinbuks, Jevgenijs, and Thomas W. Hertel. "The Optimal Allocation of Global Land Use in the Food-Energy-Environment Trilemma" (January 26, 2012). RDCEP Working Paper No. 12-01.
Jevgenijs Steinbuks et al. "Optimal Path for Global Land Use under Climate Change Uncertainty." In 2013 Annual Meeting, August 4-6, 2013, Washington, DC, no. 151413. AAEA, 2013.
Steinbuks, Jevgenijs, & Thomas W. Hertel. "Energy prices will play an important role in determining global land use in the twenty first century."Environmental Research Letters 8, no. 1 (2013): 014014.
Steinbuks, Jevgenijs, and Thomas W. Hertel. "Confronting the Food-Energy-Environment Trilemma: Global Land Use in the Long Run." Environmental and Resource Economics (2012): 1-26.
Y. Cai, et al. The effect of uncertainty in crop yields on the optimal path of global land use. R&R in Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, 2016.
Y Cai et al. The effect of climate and technological uncertainty in crop yields on the optimal path of global land use. 7009, World Bank Policy Research Working Paper Series, 2014.
Yongyang Cai et al. "The Effect of Climate and Technological Uncertainty in Crop Yields on the Optimal Path of global land use." World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 7009 (2014).
Y. Cai, K.L. Judd, and J. Steinbuks. A nonlinear certainty equivalent approximation method for dynamic stochastic problems. forthcoming in Quantitative Economics, 2016

David Weisbach

/
weisbach_175.jpg

Walter J. Blum Professor, the Law School, University of Chicago

Director, Law & Economics Program, University of Chicago

Areas of Expertise:

  • Entitlements
  • Law and Economics
  • Tax Law

Weisbach received his Bachelor of Science in mathematics from the University of Michigan in 1985; a Certificate for Advanced Studies in Mathematics from Wolfson College, Cambridge, in 1986; and a JD from Harvard Law School in 1989. After graduating from law school, Weisbach clerked for Judge Joel M. Flaum of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and worked as an associate in the law firm of Miller & Chevalier. In 1992 Weisbach joined the Department of Treasury where he worked as an attorney-advisor in the Office of the Tax Legislative Counsel and, subsequently, as associate tax legislative counsel. In 1996 Weisbach was appointed Associate Professor of Law at Georgetown Law Center and joined the Chicago faculty in 1998.

Research Projects

Trade and Carbon Taxes | Endogenous Technical Change in IAMs | Social cost of carbon and methane | Chicago Climate Online | webDICE | Optimal Timing of Energy Transition

Students

Adriana Ciccone | Misung Ahn | Jillian Durkin | Katrina Lewis

Former Students

Jeremy Klavans | Mark Woolley | Federico Simon | Aidan Sadowski | Hsin-Yi Chen | Matt Gee | Runnan Yang | Jeremy Archer

recent publications
Joshua Elliott et al. "Unilateral carbon taxes, border adjustments, and carbon leakage." Theoretical Inquiries in Law 14 (2013): 207-243.
Elliott, Joshua, Ian Foster, Samuel Kortum, Gita Khun Jush, Todd Munson, and David Weisbach. "Unilateral Carbon Taxes Border Adjustments and Carbon Leakage" (2012). RDCEP Working Paper No. 12-04.
Elliott, Joshua, Ian Foster, Samuel Kortum, Todd Munson, Fernando Perez Cervantes, and David Weisbach. "Trade and carbon taxes." The American Economic Review (2010): 465-469.
Kaplow, Louis, and David Weisbach. "Discount rates, social judgments, individuals' risk preferences, and uncertainty." Journal of Risk and Uncertainty 42, no. 2 (2011): 125-143.
Louis Kaplow et al. "The social evaluation of intergenerational policies & its application to integrated assessment models of climate change."BE Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy 10, no. 2 (2010).
Elisabeth Moyer et al. "Climate impacts on economic growth as drivers of uncertainty in the social cost of carbon." University of Chicago Coase-Sandor Institute for Law & Economics Paper 652 (2013).
E J Moyer, M D Woolley, N J Matteson, M J Glotter, and D A Weisbach. Climate impacts on economic growth as drivers of uncertainty in the social cost of carbon. The Journal of Legal Studies, 2014
Elisabeth J. Moyer et al. "Climate Impacts on Economic Growth as Drivers of Uncertainty in the Social Cost of Carbon. " The Journal of Legal Studies 43, no. 2 (2014).
Posner, Eric A., and David A. Weisbach. "International paretianism: a defense." Chicago Journal of International Law 13. (2013): 348-358.
David Weisbach and Stephen Gardiner. Debating Climate Change. Oxford University Press, forthcoming, 2015.
Weisbach, David A. "Designing Subsidies for Low Carbon Energy." Journal of Environmental and Sustainablility Law 20 (2013): 1.
David A Weisbach. Distributionally weighted cost–benefit analysis: Welfare economics meets organizational design. Journal of Legal Analysis, 2014.
Weisbach David A. "Carbon taxation in the EU: expanding the EU carbon price." Journal of Environmental Law 24. (2012): 183-206.
Weisbach David A. "Negligence, strict liability, and responsibility for climate change." Iowa Law Review 97. (2012): 521-565.
Weisbach David A. "Should environmental taxes be precautionary?" National Tax Journal 65. (2012): 453-474.
Weisbach David A. "Instrument Choice is Instrument Design." In: Metcalf G U.S. Energy Tax Policy. Gilbert Metcalf ed. U.S. Energy Tax Policy. Cambridge University Press; 2011.

Victor Zhorin

/

Research Scientist

Computation Institute

University of Chicago and Argonne National Laboratory

 

Victor V. Zhorin began his work as a theoretical physicist and an associate professor working on developing first principles quantum-mechanics foundations for a new class of infrared laser materials with mixed type of chemical bonding. Those materials were proven to be of importance for applications in laser communication, femtosecond and microchip laser design.

He was invited by the Argonne National Laboratory (DOE) to work on estimation of long-term radiation damage effects in high-level nuclear waste forms. Research showed that self-healing processes in solid-state matrix partially offset the structural damage around radioactive centers.

Recently, he is involved in economics research to analyze the role of financial systems in developing economies by using advanced structural models of economic growth with financial sector and occupation choice.

Research Projects

Robustness in Economic Models with Climate Change | Climate Variability: Model Comparisons

Laura Zamboni

/

Research Scientist

Computation Institute

University of Chicago and Argonne National Laboratory

My main research interest is the understanding of rainfall variability from seasonal to longer time scale. I am also interested in improving the characterization of rainfall variability and extreme weather events target to "real life applications" as for example energy and agricultural demands, and human health. The means to achieve such understanding include observational datasets as well as climate models, including the investigation of single processes affecting the simulated climate.

Currently, I am working on the uncertainty quantification of simulated rainfall due to uncertainties in the representation physical processes governing cloud formation and evolution. These physical processes occur at spatial and temporal scales not resolved by general circulation atmospheric models (AGCMs) and are a major source of uncertainty in explorations of natural climate variability, seasonal predictions and climate change assessments.

I am at present analyzing a large ensemble of present-day AMIP-type perturbed physics experiments I generated using the Geophysical Fluid Dynamic Laboratory (GFDL) High Resolution Atmospheric Model (HiRAM) on the Argonne Leadership Computational Facility. Simulations are performed over the entire globe at 100 Km resolution, which is outstandingly high for this type of studies. 

The project is conducted in collaboration with R. Jacob (ANL), R. V. Kotamarthi (ANL) and T. Williams (ANL), Maria Cadeddu (ANL), I. Held (GFDL), M. Zhao (GFDL), D. Neelin, and J. McWilliams (UCLA).

Two secondary projects focus on South American climate: The first project's goal is to investigate the interannual and inter-decadal variability of precipitation in South America and their relationship to ENSO flavors. The analysis is based on examination of atmospheric and coupled general circulation models, as well as observations. The second project's goal is to characterize heat waves in South America and their link to the general circulation.

Research Projects

Precipitation Physics in Climate Models

Ian Foster

/ University of Chicago/

Principal Investigator, RDCEP 

Arthur Holly Compton Distinguished Service Professor, Department of Computer Science, University of Chicago

Director, Computation Institute, Argonne National Laboratory and University of Chicago    

Associate Director, Mathematics and Computer Science Division, Argonne National Laboratory

 

Areas of Expertise:

  • Computer Science: Collaborative computing
  • Computer Science: Grid computing
  • Computer Science: High-performance computing

Foster develops tools and techniques that allow people to use high-performance computers in innovative ways. He co-invented grid computing, which has become the de facto computation standard for data-intensive, mutli-institution collaboration. As director of the Computation Institute, Foster brings together computational scientists and discipline thought leaders to work on a wide range of projects, with computation as a key component. He oversees the Distributed Systems Laboratory (DSL), which operates at both the University of Chicago and at Argonne National Laboratory. The DSL serves as the nexus of the multi-institutional Globus Project, a research and development effort that provides the advances required to make collaborative computing successful in science, engineering, business and other areas. Globus technologies are used by thousands of researchers worldwide and form the basis of several dozen national and international collaborative computing projects.

In March 2006, Foster was appointed director of the Computation Institute, a joint project between the University and Argonne that addresses the most challenging computational and communications problems arising from a broad range of intellectual pursuits.

Foster's honors include the Lovelace Medal of the British Computer Society and the Gordon Bell Prize for high-performance supercomputing.

Research Projects

FACE-IT | pSIMS | Parched Earth | Shadowing | CIM-EARTH | SOLE | GGCMI | Evaluating the utility of dynamical downscaling in agricultural impacts projections | InterSectoral Impacts Model Intercomparison and Improvement Project (ISI-MIP) | 

Former Students and Postdoctoral Scholars

Sou-Cheng Choi | Quan Tran Pham | Adriana Ciccone | Jeremy Archer

Publications
Joshua Elliott et al. The parallel system for integrating impact models and sectors (pSIMS). Proceedings of XSEDE '13: Gateway to Discovery. 2013; (Article No. 21).
Joshua Elliott et al. "Unilateral carbon taxes, border adjustments, and carbon leakage." Theoretical Inquiries in Law 14 (2013): 207-243.
Joshua Elliott et al. "Impact on US Gasoline Prices of Eliminating Biofuels Production: An Equilibrium Analysis" (2012). RDCEP Working Paper No. 12-05, Argonne National Laboratory, 2011.
Elliott, Joshua, Ian Foster, Samuel Kortum, Gita Khun Jush, Todd Munson, and David Weisbach. "Unilateral Carbon Taxes Border Adjustments and Carbon Leakage" (2012). RDCEP Working Paper No. 12-04.
J. Elliott et al. The global gridded crop model intercomparison: data and modeling protocols for phase 1 (v1.0). Geoscientific Model Development, 8(2):261–277, 2015.
Joshua Elliott et al. "Predicting Agricultural Impacts of Large-Scale Drought: 2012 and the Case for Better Modeling" (2013). RDCEP Working Paper Series No. 13-01.
Elliott, Joshua, Margaret Loudermilk, Nirupama Rao, Ian Foster, Don Fullerton, & Todd Munson. "Building a Custom Initialization Data Product for a Life-cycle OLG Model." GTAP Working Paper. June 2011.
Elliott, Joshua, Ian Foster, Samuel Kortum, Todd Munson, Fernando Perez Cervantes, and David Weisbach. "Trade and carbon taxes." The American Economic Review (2010): 465-469.
Joshua Elliott et al. "Propagation of data error and parametric sensitivity in computable general equilibrium models." Computational Economics 39, no. 3 (2012): 219-241.
Elliott, Joshua, Ian Foster, Kenneth Judd, Elisabeth Moyer, and Todd Munson. "CIM-EARTH: Framework and case study." The BE Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy 10, no. 2 (2010).
Ian Foster et al. "FACE-IT: Framework to Advance Climate, Economics, and Impact Investigations with Information Technology." In AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts, vol. 1, p. 1618. 2013.
Michael Glotter et al. "Evaluating the utility of dynamical downscaling in agricultural impacts projections." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 111, no. 24 (2014): 8776-8781.
Michael Glotter et al. Evaluating the utility of dynamical downscaling in agricultural impacts projections. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111(24):8776–8781, 2014.
Margaret S. Loudermilk et al. "Computable General Equilibrium Analysis of Economic Policies on the US Biofuels Market." Instruments for Green Futures Markets (2011): 7.
Malik, Tanu, Quan Pham and Ian Foster. "SOLE: Towards Descriptive and Interactive Publications." Implementing Reproducible Research. Chapman & Hall/CRC; (2014).
Montella, R. et al. (2015) FACE-IT: A science gateway for food security research. Concurrency & Computation: Practice & Experience
R Montella et al. Face-it: A science gateway for food security research. Proceedings of the 9th Gateway Computing Environments Workshop, 2014
Morin, Andrew, Jennifer M. Urban, Paul D. Adams, Ian Foster, Andrej Sali, David Baker, and Piotr Sliz. "Shining light into black boxes." Science (New York, NY) 336, no. 6078 (2012): 159.
Quan Pham et al. "SOLE: linking research papers with science objects." In Provenance and Annotation of Data and Processes, Springer Berlin Heidelberg, (2012): 203-208.
Q Pham, T Malik, and I Foster. Auditing and maintaining provenance in software packages. In Provenance and Annotation of Data and Processes, 2014.
Best, Neil, Joshua Elliott, and Ian Foster. "Synthesis of a Complete Land Use/Land Cover Dataset for the Conterminous United States" (May 4, 2012). RDCEP Working Paper No. 12-08.
K Chard et al. Globus data publication as a service: Lowering barriers to reproducible science. 11th IEEE International Conference on eScience, 2015
Joshua Elliott et al. "Modeling of Land-Use Changes & Other Indirect Effects of Biofuel Production in CIM-EARTH." Prepared for the U.S. Department of Energy Biomass Program, Final Report October 2011.
Joshua Elliott et al. The parallel system for integrating impact models and sectors (psims). Environmental Modelling & Software, 62:509–516, 2014.
Joshua Elliott et al. "A spatial modeling framework to evaluate domestic biofuel-induced potential land use changes and emissions." Environmental science & technology 48, no. 4 (2014): 2488-2496.
Joshua Elliott et al. "CIM-EARTH: Community Integrated Model of Economic and Resource Trajectories for Humankind." Mathematics and Computer Science Division Technical Memorandum ANL/MCS-TM-307.
Joshua Elliott et al. "Modeling of Land-Use Changes and Other Indirect Effects of Biofuel Production in CIM-EARTH." DOE Office of Biomass Program (2012).
Joshua Elliott et al. "Impact on US Gasoline Prices of Eliminating Biofuels Production: An Equilibrium Analysis," February 2012. RDCEP Policy Analysis Paper No. 12-02.

Alison Brizius

/

Executive Director, Center for Robust Decision making on Climate and Energy Policy

Computation Institute

University of Chicago and Argonne National Laboratory

 

Alison Brizius is the Executive Director of the Center for Robust Decision making on Climate and Energy Policy and a member of the Computation Institute at the University of Chicago and Argonne National Laboratory.  Alison's interests center on developing innovative and sustainable approaches to improving the quality and accessibility of scientific information for public policy decision-making. Prior to joining RDCEP, she was the policy and special projects manager for the Chicago Council on Science and Technology (C2ST).  There she led a broad range of activities designed to increase public understanding of science policy issues of national importance.  Alison received her Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Chicago in 2011 where she helped design, construct, test and analyze data from a microwave telescope and detector array based at the Chajnantor Observatory, in San Pedro de Atacama, Chile.  This experiment (QUIET) was designed to measure the polarization of the cosmic microwave background radiation, the characteristics of which have the potential to elucidate the structure and evolution of the early universe.  She received her B.S. in Physics from Stanford University and her M.S. in Physics from the University of Chicago.  

Research Projects

FACE-IT | webDICE | Energy Inventory | Chicago Climate Online | Climate Emulator | RPS

Recent RDCEP Publications:

Recent RDCEP Presentations and Workshops:

  • “FACE-IT: Framework to Advance Climate Economic and Impacts Investigations with Information Technology.” Next Generation Agricultural Systems Models Part 2, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Washington, D.C. January 29, 2015.
  • “Introduction to FACE-IT for AgMIP.” AgMIP Phase 2 Fundamentals Workshop, Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe. June 29, 2015.
  • "Information intensive research initiatives at the Center of Robust Decision making on Climate and Energy Policy." Workshop on Research Information Technologies and their Role in Advancing Science, University of Chicago, May 2014.