Methodologies for the economic impacts of climate change in the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona

IP: Jaume Freire

CETAQUA

2023-2024

In the context of the Horizon European project ICARIA (Improving ClimAte Resilience of crItical Assets), Jaume Freire will collaborate with CETAQUA on the development of methodologies for damages caused by different climate change risks, such as floods, droughts, heat waves, forest fires and other extreme weather events. He will also provide advice and support in the implementation of simulations to assess the economic impact of these natural hazards in the metropolitan area of Barcelona (AMB), using various applied methods.

Multidimensional measure of fragility

IP: Hannes Mueller

FFO- S05-P-01-German Government

2023-2024

The aim of this project is to support decision-making processes within the German Federal Foreign Office (AA) in a practical way through applications of artificial intelligence (AI) and natural language processing (NLP). The project is developing a multidimensional fragility measure to map fragility on several dimensions (like conflict, economics, gender and climate change) for all countries on a monthly basis. This will enable the foreign office to develop policies based on better foresight regarding these dimensions of fragility. Examples of fragility measures we intend to develop include predicting the collapse of agricultural production from climate catastrophe, predicting the fiscal environment and predicting refugee flows.

Anticipating New Conflict: A three-year global risk assessment

IP: Hannes Mueller

FCDO-UK Government

2023-2024

In collaboration with the Office for Conflict, Stabilisation and Mediation (OCSM) at the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), we developed a shortlist of peaceful countries to guide preventative actions. Funded by UK Aid Direct, our February 2024 report includes this shortlist and detailed "report cards" for over 180 countries, offering policymakers comprehensive insights into the drivers of conflict risk. We enhanced the forecasting method on conflictforecast.org to predict conflict risks over the next 36 months by integrating structural variables like democracy and exclusion indicators from the VDEM dataset. This project also introduced key advancements to be incorporated into conflictforecast.org, including improved data handling, consideration of neighboring countries' violence levels, and the use of text embeddings from news articles. Additionally, we adapted our Dynamic Early-Warning and Action Model to better identify countries where preventative measures could yield the greatest benefits.

Aggregation and acquisition of information in markets: positive and normative aspects

PI: Jordi Brandts and Xavier Vives

IESE

2021-2027

IESE and the Fundació d’Economia Analíta have signed a collaboration agreement for the development of research on positive and regulatory aspects of the aggregation and acquisition of information in markets. The aim of the project is to analyze the incentives of economic agents to acquire information when subsequently they have to compete and trade in the market, analyze information acquisition and trading strategies, and the welfare impact on all market participants. The welfare analysis will follow in order to prescribe policy measures. The project aims to contrast the predictions of the theoretical models with experimental evidence in simplified scenarios. In particular, it would aim to validate in the laboratory the derived behavior taxonomy obtained in the theoretical analysis. The results of the research will serve as a basis for the publication of articles on this subject.