Bio: Rosaria Ignaccolo (named Rosalba) is Associate Professor of Statistics at the University of Torino, Italy, since December 2016. Her research interests include: nonparametric estimation and tests for functional parameters, functional data analysis and modeling, geostatistics for functional data, spatial statistics, space-time modeling, hierarchical models, risk mapping, with particular reference to air quality and meteorology.  

She is Secretary of  Italian environmetricians group named GRASPA (www.graspa.org) since September 2017 and was Secretary of The International Environmetrics Society (TIES, www.environmetrics.org) from September 2013 to August 2017.

Title of the talk: Functional Kriging for Air Quality 

Summary: The increasing interest in spatially correlated functional data has led to the recent development of appropriate geostatistical techniques that allow to predict a curve at an unmonitored location. It is possible to consider ordinary and universal kriging models under the assumption of a constant or longitude and latitude dependent mean as well as kriging with external drift that takes into account the effect of exogenous variables (either scalar or functional). In the context of air quality mapping, a predicted curve could represent pollutant concentrations along time having taken into account a trend defined by meteorological time-varying covariates and orographical constant-in-time variables and, or alternatively defined by means of the output of a numerical model to integrate monitoring data (in the framework of the so-called “data fusion”).

To evaluate the uncertainty of the predicted curves, we propose a semi-parametric bootstrap for spatially correlated functional data, which ensures that the spatial dependence structure is maintained in the bootstrap samples. It is then possible to obtain uncertainty bands for a predicted curve in an unmonitored site with changing width, useful for monitoring purposes and policy assessment.

Bio: Jörg Peters heads the research group “Climate Change in Developing Countries” at RWI and is a Professor of Economics at the University of Passau. His research focuses on environmental, energy and development economics. In this context, Jörg leads several projects across Africa that study infrastructure roll-out and climate policy as well as demand and supply side constraints on markets for new technologies. Using both randomized and non-randomized designs, his work has covered energy-efficient cookstoves, grid-based electrification, off-grid solar, and irrigation. Moreover, Jörg is engaged in the research transparency debate and interested in finding the right evaluation methodology for the policy question at hand.

Title of the talk: Rural electrification and economic development – A review of literature reviews and the limits of evidence-based policy

Summary: For decades, governments and donor organizations invested billions of dollars in extending electricity infrastructure into rural areas, often for political and social reasons, but also built on the claim that electrification triggers economic development. In the last 15 years, the ‘credibility revolution’ in economic research has made inroads into this important policy area, and a considerable number of well-crafted studies have been published. This emerging literature has recently been subject to a set of reviews and meta-analyses conducted by scholars and international organizations. We summarize these reviews to demonstrate that no clear picture emerges. All reviews diagnose a divide in the electrification literature, with some studies observing substantial positive effects of electrification on economic development and others providing rather sobering results. We distil the main narratives the reviews provide to explain this divide and, building on this, ponder further explanations. In a next step, we take the perspective of a well-meaning policy maker who is eager to take evidence-based decisions. It is easy to see that whatever her existing priors or the vested interests of her organization, she can find justification in the divided literature for a preferred course of action. We conclude by pointing out the limitations of the ‘evidence-based policy’ paradigm and emphasize the importance of a regionally limited ‘tinkering approach’.

Bio: I am an economist, Professor at the University of Poitiers, I am affiliated to Crief and FR CNRS TEPP. I am also a research associate at the Chaire "Energie et Prospérité", at Mines ParisTech where I am co-head (with PN Giraud) of the Chaire "Industrial Economics of Emerging Africa" and at the Institut des Migrations. I was previously Associate Professor at Le Mans Université (2010-2020), affiliated to the GAINS, a research economist at Cepii (Paris) (2007-2010) and a research fellow at the Robert Schumann Center for Advanced Studies at European University Institute (2006-2008). I hold a PhD from Toulouse School of Economics. I pursue my research on the broad field of labor and especially on issues related to human capital, migrations and public policies. You will find here my published articles and other working papers and work in progress. Please feel free to contact me in case you need a non gated version of my published work or if you have any questions on other research material. I also worked as a an expert and consultant for international organizations working in the field of economic development and the evaluation of public policies (World Bank, United Nations Development Program). I teach applied econometrics and labor economics, at both graduate and undergraduate level, and I am involved in teaching economics, statistics and econometrics geared toward executives and other non-academic professionals at ENSAE-ENSAI (Cepe).

Title of the training course: An overview of impact evaluation econometrics tools : an economist perspective