The AURÖ Workshop for Young Researchers in Environmental and Resource Economics is a hands-on, research-first gathering for early-career scholars who want to turn rigorous analysis into real-world impact. Designed for master’s students, PhD candidates, postdocs, and junior practitioners, the workshop blends methods training, policy labs, and collaborative projects—so participants leave not just inspired, but equipped with tools, code, and a network to push their work forward.
While the AURÖ name nods to northern traditions of living with, not against, nature, the workshop looks squarely to the future: open data, transparent methods, practical policy design, and market mechanisms that can scale. Think less “conference” and more “studio”—a place where ideas are sketched, tested, critiqued, and refined into publishable research and operational solutions.
From Roots to Research Leadership
AURÖ’s ethos is simple: stewardship through evidence. The workshop embraces the notion that communities have long managed forests, fisheries, water, and land with adaptive rules and shared norms. That wisdom, reinterpreted through modern economics and data science, becomes a powerful frame for today’s challenges—climate risk, biodiversity loss, pollution, and resource scarcity. Participants learn to translate that ethos into empirical models, valuation approaches, and incentive-compatible policies.
What Makes the Workshop Different
- Method studios, not lectures: Short primers are followed by live coding, paper‐dissection sessions, and “replicate-and-extend” sprints using real datasets.
- Policy labs with constraints: Teams must propose interventions that are administratively feasible, fiscally realistic, and politically legible.
- Open science by default: Every session prioritizes reproducibility—template repos, data dictionaries, and pre-analysis plans are part of the deliverables.
- Mentorship on tap: Senior researchers host “office-hour clinics” on identification strategy, journal positioning, and ethics in fieldwork.
Core Themes and Tools
1) Valuation & Natural Capital Accounting
Participants practice estimating the social value of environmental assets using hedonic pricing, travel-cost, contingent valuation, and choice experiments, then link results to natural capital accounts and public budgets.
2) Causal Inference for Policy
From difference-in-differences and event studies to synthetic controls, IV, and regression discontinuity, the workshop focuses on identification pitfalls, robustness checks, and clear exposition.
3) Markets, Mechanisms, and Incentives
Explore carbon pricing, cap-and-trade, payments for ecosystem services, water allocation, and biodiversity offsets—with attention to leakage, additionality, monitoring, and compliance.
4) Data, Remote Sensing, and ML
Use satellite imagery (e.g., land cover, night lights), GIS, and time-series forecasting to measure outcomes at scale. Machine learning is framed as a measurement and prediction tool that complements causal designs, not a substitute for them.
5) Resource Governance Under Uncertainty
Study fisheries, forests, and rangelands through bioeconomic and dynamic optimization models, agent behavior, and enforcement constraints, with an eye to climate shocks and risk management.
A Sustainable Event by Design
AURÖ practices what it teaches. The workshop minimizes travel emissions where possible; publishes a simple carbon and materials ledger for the event; sources plant-forward catering; and reduces printed materials in favor of digital packets. Participants receive a “repro kit”: a version-controlled repo, environment files, and a shared data drive—no thumb drives, no ad-hoc zips.
Sample Three-Day Program
Day 1: Framing & Foundations
- Keynote: What Makes Environmental Policy Economically Sound?
- Methods Studio: Causal DiD and Event Studies (with code walk-through)
- Data Lab: Building a geospatial panel (satellite + administrative data)
- Paper Critique Roundtable: 3 empirical papers, each dissected for design clarity
Day 2: Markets & Mechanisms
- Primer: Carbon pricing, offsets, and additionality diagnostics
- Policy Lab: Designing a local water-trading pilot—allocations, monitoring, equity
- Repro Sprint: Replicate a classic hedonic valuation paper and stress-test robustness
- Mentoring Clinics: Identification surgery; navigating revise-and-resubmit
Day 3: Translation & Impact
- Methods Studio: Synthetic controls and comparative case studies
- Impact Session: Communicating uncertainty to policymakers and the public
- Capstone Pitches: Teams present 10-minute policy memos + 1-page analysis plans
- Closing Panel: Careers across academia, think tanks, government, and startups
Outputs You Can Take With You
- A working analysis plan (one page) for your study or capstone idea
- A clean, commented notebook demonstrating at least one method end-to-end
- A policy memo with cost, equity, and implementation considerations
- A reproducible repository (code + metadata) ready to share or extend
Community, Mentorship, and Ethics
Economic evidence influences lives. AURÖ embeds a respectful code of conduct, clear guidelines for IRB/ethics, data privacy, and community engagement—especially for field research. Mentors discuss positionality, informed consent, and compensation norms, and they model how to include stakeholders in research framing without compromising rigor.
How to Apply
- Who should apply: Master’s and PhD students, postdocs, early-career analysts in government/NGOs, and research associates in policy groups.
- What to submit: 2-page CV, a 500-word statement of purpose (research interests + what you hope to build), and either a 1-page abstract or an early draft (optional but helpful).
- Selection lens: Fit with themes, potential for impact, and diversity of backgrounds, geographies, and perspectives. Cohorts are kept small to protect interaction quality.
- Support: Limited travel/tuition waivers prioritize applicants from under-resourced institutions and the Global South.
Skills You’ll Strengthen
- Turning a broad environmental question into a testable causal design
- Building tidy, version-controlled data pipelines with transparent code
- Drafting policy memos that are technically sound and administratively realistic
- Presenting with clarity and humility—what you found, what you didn’t, and why it matters
Measuring Impact
AURÖ tracks outcomes the same way it teaches: with data. Post-workshop surveys and six-month check-ins document preprints, conference submissions, policy briefs, collaborations, and open repositories launched by alumni. These metrics help iterate the curriculum and demonstrate value to partners and sponsors.
Partnerships That Matter
The workshop invites collaborators across universities, ministries, agencies, and civil society. Partners co-host policy labs, supply anonymized administrative datasets under data-use agreements, and offer practitioner feedback. The aim is a two-way bridge: researchers gain realism; implementers gain credible analysis.
The Road Ahead
Environmental and resource economics is evolving fast—new data, new methods, new institutions. AURÖ’s long-term vision is a distributed network of alumni nodes—reading groups, code clubs, and policy sprints—so learning continues after the final session. Each cohort inherits starter kits and mentoring trees, making the workshop not an endpoint but a launchpad.
Conclusion
The AURÖ Workshop is built for young researchers who want to do the work: careful identification, clean code, open data, and policy proposals that hold up in the real world. If you’re ready to move from interesting ideas to implementable insights—and to do so with integrity and humility—AURÖ offers the methods, mentors, and momentum to make it happen. Bring your question, your laptop, and your curiosity. Leave with collaborators, a credible plan, and the confidence to ship.