REMARC UniPi

Congratulations!

Tiziano Distefano is awarded the 2021-2022 MIT-UNIPI MISTI grant. The team is composed by Tiziano (PI); Nicholas A. Ashford (PI) – MIT Sloan; Ralph Hall – Virginia TECH and
Simone D’Alessandro. MISTI grants support visiting periods and exchange activities between the Massachussets Institute of Technology (MIT) and other universities worldwide.

This is the project abstract: 
This project aims at exploring the interlinkages among the social, economic, and environmental challenges facing the U.S. in order to provide policy advice for a legitimate, fair, and evidence-informed post-COVID transition towards sustainability. To this end, we apply and extend the EUROGREEN model (D’Alessandro et al., 2020) that is grounded on system dynamics and ecological macroeconomics to explore the economic and environmental performance of specific policy scenarios. Each scenario will consider alternative policy packages composed of several social and energy policies introduced simultaneously and in an integrated fashion. This approach will allow the evaluation of possible synergies and trade-offs across these measures and to calibrate fine-tuned policy responses. The main research questions that will be addressed are: What policies have the potential to create both a resilient and fair economy that operates within planetary boundaries and delivers a decent life for all in the U.S.? What combination of policies can be simultaneously deployed to reach different socio-economic and environmental goals?
This project will also foster collaboration between the faculty listed in the proposal, who will also reach out to other colleagues with specific expertise. Moreover, it pays particular attention to the involvement of undergraduate and graduate students through winter/summer schools and the creation of a new interdisciplinary curriculum. This curriculum will offer a set of courses that will provide students with a strong foundation in computing, economics, sustainable development, policy, statistics, modeling, and concerns for equity. Finally, an interactive and user-friendly online platform will be provided for the general public to disseminate the main results.

REMARC’s first MIT-UNIPI grant was awarded to Elisa Giuliani in 2017- 2018.