This summer, Washington State University economics professor Ana Espinola-Arredondo will help students at Denmark’s Aarhus University learn how game theory can help explain and solve challenges facing our environment.
As a visiting teacher, Espinola-Arredondo will lead a graduate-level course, “Applications of Game Theory to Environmental Problems,” while staying in Denmark’s second largest city. The summer experience will expand her abilities as an educator while helping students understand the decision-making process of people, regulators, and companies facing environmental problems.
“Game theory helps us identify the strategic behavior of agents — people, companies, governments — when facing some type of uncertainty,” Espinola-Arredondo said. “In the context of climate change, it can help identify scenarios in which firms decide to cooperate with regulatory agencies by investing in clean technologies or reducing pollution.”
At WSU since 2009, Espinola-Arredondo researches and teaches environmental economics as well as game theory, an economic discipline that explores how people make choices while anticipating the decisions of others.
Traveling to Denmark in June, she will lead the course over 16 days in July. Applying game theory to environmental issues facing Europe, Espinola-Arredondo is excited to help forge international links between Denmark and U.S. scientists.
“It lets me discuss environmental policies and their different strategic effects in the U.S. and Europe,” she said. “It’s also a great opportunity to promote research developed here at WSU.”
Joseph Iannelli, a WSU engineering professor who directs the Transatlantic WSU-Denmark Coalition for Environmental Sustainability as well as WSU’s European Union Erasmus+ projects, helped make Espinola-Arredondo’s summer experience possible through ongoing work building research and teaching opportunities in Europe. Connecting her and other researchers with peers in Denmark, Iannelli also recently supported four CAHNRS students learning at Aarhus University.
“Denmark is an ideal site for collaboration: the country is a world leader in the science and economics of sustainability, particularly in deployment of green technologies and elaboration of circular economies,” Iannelli said. “What excites me about these programs is the opportunity to remove barriers, help graduate internationally minded students for leadership in multicultural, global societies, and establish partnerships to advance knowledge more effectively than any single institution could do alone.”
Espinola-Arredondo was chosen to lead the summer course following a competitive process at Aarhus.
“Joseph has established strong connections with Aarhus University and I am thankful for his advice and support,” she said.
Learn more about her work on her School of Economic Sciences profile webpage.