Conferences + Workshops

The Incubator will host a series of events highlighting new research and bringing together leading experts from all over the world. There will be one or more events on each facet of the Global Energy Challenge – Energy Markets, Pollution, and Climate Change – allowing time and space to explore each topic. These conferences will be a centerpiece of the Incubator, generating groundbreaking research papers, seeding new research projects, and anchoring visits from both established and early-career researchers. 

Each event will feature an interdisciplinary group of scholars from the College, the Harris School of Public Policy, the Booth School of Business, and the Law School, who will present the latest insights from their work. They will be joined in conversation by a diverse group of speakers from other leading universities, relevant government agencies at home and abroad, and industry practitioners. By leveraging the University’s existing hubs in critical countries around the world, the events may take place in the regions most sensitive to the Global Energy Challenge while retaining a clear UChicago connection for faculty and invited experts alike.

More information on upcoming events will be added here as it becomes available.

The Chicago Causal Inference Student Conference, sponsored by the Kenneth C. Griffin Applied Economics Incubator at the University of Chicago, seeks to gather a selected group of graduate students working at the intersection of empirical microeconomics and applied econometrics.

Eligible candidates are students who expect to be enrolled in a Ph.D. program in March 2024. Students attending domestic or international institutions are welcome to apply. Participants will be reimbursed up to $700 in economy airfare. In addition, a two-night hotel accommodation will be provided.

Submissions of complete or preliminary drafts are welcome, but extended abstracts will not be considered. Because the conference aims at fostering the development and discussion of student research, papers co-authored with faculty and/or postdoctoral scholars are not eligible. Each graduate student may submit more than one paper.

The submission deadline is November 30, 2023, and the list of selected participants will be announced by the end of December.

If interested, please complete this application form. If you have any questions, please email chicagocausalinference@gmail.com.

Energy powers the modern world, fueling innovation and improving people’s lives. But humanity’s energy usage is also generating levels of pollution that are substantially shortening human lifespans and causing disruptive climate change. Finding a way to supply the energy needed for human development without risking health or the environment is one of the world’s most important challenges: the Global Energy Challenge.

To promote and discuss current research on these issues, the Kenneth C. Griffin Applied Economics Incubator and the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago (EPIC) will host a series of academic conferences this spring on each component of the Global Energy Challenge: energy access and markets, air pollution, and climate change.

Energy powers the modern world, fueling innovation and improving people’s lives. But humanity’s energy usage is also generating levels of pollution that are substantially shortening human lifespans and causing disruptive climate change. Finding a way to supply the energy needed for human development without risking health or the environment is one of the world’s most important challenges: the Global Energy Challenge.

To promote and discuss current research on these issues, the Kenneth C. Griffin Applied Economics Incubator and the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago (EPIC) will host a series of academic conferences this spring on each component of the Global Energy Challenge: energy access and markets, air pollution, and climate change.

A virtual panel discussion hosted in conjunction with the Brookings Institution’s Governance Studies program will highlight and advance the ideas generated by the Incubator’s first year, dedicated to advancing the science of scaling.

A convening of contributors to the edited volume, “The Scale-up Effect in Early Childhood and Public Policy: Why interventions lose impact at scale and what we can do about it.”

Authors who will be submitting papers for potential publication in an upcoming special issue of the Journal of Political Economy presented their ideas and early drafts at this September workshop.