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Overview
We are soliciting applications from bright researchers motivated to work on the defining issue of climate change to join our research institute. Due to an expanded portfolio of projects and our belief in multi/disciplinarity, we are promoting a cluster hiring consisting of several (8) job opportunities in several areas of climate research. These include applied and behavioral economics, political economy, data science, decision theory, and energy-economy-climate modelling (see below for specific job ads). The cluster hire is intended to strengthen our existing research groups and promote new research lines. It is mainly targeted at post-docs and junior researchers (though other seniorities will be considered). Career paths are designed for researchers to grow in a nurturing environment with guided supervision and clear steps toward tenure.
Job opening #1. Empirical industrial organization economics of the green transition
The successful applicant will work in the context of a project task focusing on the competitiveness impact of climate policies on European firms
Responsibilities:
Specific tasks included but are not limited to:
- Analyse firm-level and sector-level data on productivity and performance, energy prices, energy consumption and efficiency to quantify the impact of climate policy of firms’ outcomes including, but not limited to, energy demand, productivity, material demand, market performance, capital investments, labour demand;
- Contribute to policy evaluations of existing and proposed EU climate policies and industrial policies - including those related to digitalization – on firm- and sector-level performance;
- Write and contribute to scientific articles and science-policy reports derived from the above work, and present those at scientific workshops and conferences.
Qualifications:
Required: Phd in Economics or field related to industrial organization, demonstrated interest and knowledge in industrial organization dynamics, including those related to the diffusion of ICT and other digital technologies. Programming in STATA, R or any other major statistical software. Fluency in English (Italian not needed), good presentation and writing skills. Willingness to travel to project meetings and to conferences. Ability to work in an interdisciplinary and diverse environment committed to high quality research.
Desirable: Interest in exploring import and export dynamics.
Job opening #2. Applied economics for a just transition
The successful applicant will work in the context of a project focusing on assessing the impact of the energy transition on employment and inequality in Europe and beyond.
Responsibilities:
Specific tasks include but are not limited to:
- Empirical analysis of the impact of climate and energy policies on labour and skill demand at the aggregated, sectoral and firm level using frontier applied labour economics approaches
- Contribute to policy evaluations of existing and proposed EU climate policies and industrial policies - including those related to digitalization - on labour reskilling and upskilling;
- Perform distributional analysis of policy incidence on economic and social inequality
- Write and contribute to scientific articles and science-policy reports derived from the above work, and present those at scientific workshops and conferences.
Qualifications
Required: Phd in Economics or field related to labour economics, demonstrated interest and knowledge of the main research stream in the field of green labour, green jobs, and economic inequality. Programming in STATA, R or any other major statistical software. Fluency in English (Italian not needed), good presentation and writing skills. Willingness to travel to project meetings and to conferences. Ability to work in an interdisciplinary and diverse environment committed to high-quality research.
Desirable: Interest in the analysis of trade unions.
Job opening #3. Political economy of the environment
We are encouraging applications by economists and political and social scientists interested in working on the political dynamics of the low-carbon transition, within a project focused on public acceptance of climate policies. Researchers specializing in political economy, public opinion, and political behavior are particularly encouraged to apply.
Responsibilities:
Specific tasks include but are not limited to:
- Design and analyze online surveys and experiments on social acceptance and preferences of climate policies and related topics.
- Contribute to policy evaluations of existing and proposed EU climate policies
- Write and contribute to scientific articles and science-policy reports derived from the above work, and present those at scientific workshops and conferences
Qualifications
Required: The ideal candidate for this position holds (or is close to completing) a PhD in economics, public policy, political science, sociology, or related fields, and shows a strong track record in quantitative methods (advanced econometrics, computational methods, machine learning, etc.). The candidate will work on international research projects focused on the political feasibility of the climate transition.
Desirable: Proficiency in R or Stata, experience in online survey design and/or experiments
Job opening #4. Behavioural science
We are encouraging applications by economists and data scientists interested in working on design and impact evaluation of field experiments. Researchers specializing in behavioral economics, statistical methods for applied microeconomics, structural estimations, machine learning, and big data analytics are particularly encouraged to apply.
Responsibilities:
The successful applicant will work on a project focusing on design and impact evaluation of field experiments in the context of resource conservation. Specific tasks included are:
- Design and implement surveys and field experiments on behavioural interventions to promote clean energy adoption;
- Analyse high-frequency metering data and employ machine-learning techniques;
- Combine administrative data with data from other sources, retrieved through web-scraping techniques;
- Structural estimations and welfare analysis;
- Write and contribute to scientific articles and science-policy reports derived from the above work, and present those at scientific workshops and conferences.
Qualifications
Required: The ideal candidate for this position holds (or is close to completing) a PhD in economics, data science, or related fields, and shows a strong track record in quantitative methods (advanced econometrics, computational methods, machine learning, etc.). Programming in STATA, R or any other major statistical software. Fluency in English (Italian not needed), good presentation and writing skills. Willingness to travel to project meetings and to conferences. Ability to work in an interdisciplinary and diverse environment committed to high-quality research.
Desirable: experience with web scraping techniques, programming in python
Job opening #5. Decision science under uncertainty
We are looking for researchers in decision theory and applications in the area of climate change. The applicant will work on a new ERC project dealing with deep and structural uncertainties in deep-time projections of climate and economy scenarios.
Responsibilities:
Specific tasks include either or more of one of the following activities:
- Development and applications of theories of robust decision making to climate change;
- Analysis of tipping points in the climate and social systems;
- Stochastic climate-economic modelling.
Qualifications
Required: The ideal candidate holds a PhD in applied mathematics, decision theory, economics, or related fields. Experience in robust decision making under uncertainty is required. Capacity to develop either theoretical or numerical application. Fluency in English (Italian not needed), good presentation and writing skills. Willingness to travel to project meetings and to conferences. Ability to work in an interdisciplinary and diverse environment committed to high-quality research.
Desirable: Previous experience with climate change research, including climate science.
Job opening #6. Data Science on climate and social statistics and scenarios
The successful applicant will work in the context of an ERC project focusing on applying machine learning to scenario ensembles and to a project focusing on the downscaling of economic, environmental and social data - both observed and resulting from modelling - to the sub-national level.
Responsibilities:
Specific tasks include but are not limited to:
- Apply machine learning methods to scenario ensembles to quantify key uncertainties and biases;
- Develop statistical emulators of climate and economy models;
- Downscaling of economic, industrial, and social data from the national level to subnational level:
- Generation of compositive indicators through statistical or ML learning techniques to generate indexes to monitor progress towards the EU transition;
- Write and contribute to scientific articles and science-policy reports derived from the above work, and present those at scientific workshops and conferences.
Qualifications
Required: Phd in Data Science, Statistics or related field. Demonstrated competencies and knowledge of the main research stream in the field of climate science or ecological transition. Programming in R, Python or any other major programming language. Fluency in English (Italian not needed), good presentation and writing skills. Willingness to travel to project meetings and to conferences. Ability to work in an interdisciplinary and diverse environment committed to high-quality research.
Desirable: Familiarity with statistical interpretation of climate model ensembles
Job opening #7. Integrated assessment modelling
We are encouraging applications by modellers and economists interested in integrated assessment modelling for climate change. The candidate will join an international and interdisciplinary team to contribute to developing our suite of integrated assessment models, which include detailed-process climate-energy-economy models, energy system models and macro-economic models.
Responsibilities:
The successful applicant will work on a model development project, investigating climate change solutions and improving the representation of climate change mitigation and impacts in our models. Specific tasks included but are not limited to:
- Integration of climate change adaptation and impacts into climate-economy models at regional and national level;
- Developing methods to represent biodiversity and ecosystems in integrated assessment models;
- Capturing the resources and material requirements of the low-carbon transition;
- Contribution to developing the open-source integrated assessment models WITCH and RICE+;
- Write and contribute to scientific articles and science-policy reports derived from the above work, and present those at scientific workshops and conferences.
Qualifications
Required: The ideal candidate for this position holds (or is close to completing) a degree or a PhD in economics, applied mathematics, environmental engineering, or any related fields to integrated assessment models. Modelling experience using modelling language (GAMS, AMPL, JUMP) and fluency in programming language such as python, julia or R. Fluency in English (Italian not needed), good presentation and writing skills. Willingness to travel to project meetings and to conferences. Ability to work in an interdisciplinary and diverse environment committed to high-quality research.
Desirable: experience with integrated assessment modelling.
Job opening #8. Agent-based modelling
We are encouraging applications by economists and computer scientists interested in agent-based modelling for climate change. The candidate will join an international and interdisciplinary team to contribute to developing our agent-based models and to integrate them with climate-economy-energy models to study the climate transition and climate change risks.
Responsibilities:
The successful applicant will work on a project investigating climate change solutions and improving the representation of finance and climate change impacts in our agent-based model (ABM). Specific tasks include but are not limited to:
- Contribution to the development of the macro-economic ABM DSK;
- Development of micro-ABMs for the distributional repercussions of climate change policies and risks;
- Link ABMs to climate economy models energy;
- Write and contribute to scientific articles and science-policy reports derived from the above work, and present those at scientific workshops and conferences.
Qualifications
Required: The ideal candidate for this position holds (or is close to completing) a degree or a PhD in economics, applied mathematics, computer science, or any related fields to agent based models with clear applications to climate change or environmental economics. Modelling experience using programming language such as C/C++, rust, java, python, julia or R. Fluency in English (Italian not needed), good presentation and writing skills. Willingness to travel to project meetings and to conferences. Ability to work in an interdisciplinary and diverse environment committed to high-quality research.
Desirable: experience with integrated assessment modeling.
Terms of appointment
Assignments are expected to begin as soon as possible and until filled. We are looking for post-docs (Phd completed less than two years or about to be completed) and junior researchers (at least two years since Phd, equivalent to assistant professor), though we will also be considering more senior candidates. The appointment period will be initially two years, renewable for two additional years pending a positive evaluation. Tenure can be granted from 2 to 4 years after being appointed as a junior researcher. Evaluation will occur every six months and is based on research productivity and involvement with the team. Researchers will be able to present their work at conferences in the EU and internationally.
The gross salary will be based on qualification and working experience and competitive with major research centers in Europe. Italy has a program called “Tax incentives for attracting human capital in Italy”, which includes significant tax exemptions for researchers of all nationalities who spent the last two years outside the country. In Italy, you would be also covered by public social security for medical issues and expenses. Smart working is permitted up to a maximum 40% of working time.
About us
The RFF-CMCC European Institute on Economics and the Environment is a research institute co-founded in 2018 by RFF and CMCC. The Institute aims to improve environmental, energy, and natural resource decisions through impartial research and policy engagement. We promote interdisciplinary, diverse and collaborative research. The institute is committed to high academic standards and has hosted 7 ERC grants. We are based in Milan (Italy) in the vibrant design district (@BASE). We promote a collaborative working place environment that values diversity, tolerance, and equity.
Applicants should provide a detailed curriculum vitae with the list of publications and relevant papers, and two references' contact information. They should specify their preferred job opening post (see reference number above).
Interviews will be conducted during the European Job Market (EJME) 2022 and on a rolling basis until the position is filled, with precedence to early candidates. For any further information or clarification, please contact job@eiee.org.
- Curriculum vitae
- Job market paper
- Additional paper (optional)
- Contact information for references
- Letters of reference: 2