International Summer School 2018 in Torino, Italy

The School is designed to offer two weeks “full immersion”  in user charges regulation of local public services (e.g. waste, water, public transport, district heating, sport facilities) and is mainly addressed to undergraduate students at their last year, PhD and graduate students and officials from the Public Administration (municipalities, counties, regional bodies) and regulatory agencies.

The course lasts two weeks and is articulated in three parts:
– theoretical module
– industry analysis
– case studies (with a virtual regulatory final report prepared by attendants)

Topics covered

1. Theory of Regulation from origins to Principal-Agent, Incentives and Mechanism Design
– Regulation as a game of incomplete information: incentives and mechanism design in local regulation
– Natural / legal monopoly and market failures
– Regulatory Authorities at local level: constraints
– Regulatory targets: price/demand, costs, profits, quality
– Economic analysis for regulation : public and private costs, industrial economic analysis, capital budgeting  sensitivity analysis, risk analysis
– Regulatory policies: ex-ante and ex-post regulation, auction, price-cap, IRR, other instruments

2. Case Studies and Guest Lecture
– Sector-based case studies (e.g. water cycle, urban waste management)
– Country-based case studies
– Guest lectures by international experts and practitioners.

3. On the Field Work
– Site-visits to local plants
– Work in groups to develop virtual local regulatory case studies: regulatory goals, data collection, information asymmetries management,  analysis and definition of tariff regulation or other regulatory aspects
– Production and presentation of a final report .

The Summer School is a unique experience offering the opportunity to meet an international faculty and participants from all over the world, interested in learning and sharing experiences about local policies and local regulation.

Selection criteria applied

Curricula are evaluated on the basis of three main criteria:

1) relevance of applicant’s studies and professional experience / current job position to the topics of the Summer School programme
2) balanced geographical distribution of selected participants (OECD / non-OECD members; distribution per continent; inclusion of applicants from Countries non represented in the previous editions)
3) balanced distribution of educational background (e.g. economics; environmental engineering; law; public administration; …)

Moreover, in the case of curricula with similar score, also some attention is given to the selection of profiles with expertise in different sectors relevant to the domain of regulation of LPS (e.g. water cycle, waste, energy, …).
Official Link

Deadline: 4th June 2018