Trento Summer School in Adaptive Economic Dynamics

About Us

Professor Axel Leijonhufvud. Credits: www.ineteconomics.org

Professor Axel Leijonhufvud in 1995 was appointed Professor of Monetary Theory and Policy at the University of Trento, serving until 2008. He  is the founder of our Summer School and in  the following  interview he describes the principles inspiring him in running the school:

"This year's summer school is the 18th of a series of intensive courses in Adaptive  Economic Dynamics offered with the financial support of the Latsis Foundation (Geneva)  [...]

Adaptive economic dynamics deals with market or social interactions of numerous  agents and we study these interactions as on-going processes. Traditional economics  has concentrated on equilibria of the process; we are studying the processes for their  own sake and not all of them converge on an equilibrium.

The First Summer School had as its subject Computable Economics  and was offered  in 2000 by Professor Vela Velupillai with guest lecture appearances by Professors  Daniel Heymann, Scott Kelso and Francesco Luna. Several students have travelled a  long distance to come to Trento from Australia, New Zealand, India, Taiwan, Vietnam,  Syria, Argentina, Peru, Mexico, Brazil, the USA, and Canada. Naturally, European  Countries are well represented: Italy, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, the  Czech Republic, Spain, Portugal and Greece.

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People who have directed or been guest lecturers in our Summer Schools  are generally well known internationally in their field. The most famous of them are the Nobel Prize Awarded Reinhard Selten (2001's edition)  and Joseph Stiglitz (2016's edition): year after year, it is the calibre of the faculty  that explains why we attract applications from all over the world [...]

Here the students learn new methods and are shown how to address research problems that very often are not part of the curricula at most universities. We are giving them an advanced graduate course in subject areas that they can not get at their university and we expose them to some of the best people in the field [...].

They get to discuss with the lecturers, work with them, ask them questions, and so on. Also the Visiting Lecturers stay around for at least five working days and are available to the students throughout their stay in Trento. We get people who are very well-known in their field but we definitely do not invite the kind of academics who fly in, give a talk, and fly out again. The students in our Summer Schools often  maintain contact with the professors also after returning to their home universities [...]."

 

Professor Joseph Stiglitz

Professor Joseph Stiglitz (Nobel Awarded - 2001) directed the 2016 edition of the Trento  Summer School in AED. He talks about his experience in Trento in this interview:

"I have come to Italy in different occasions and various times. I have been to Siena,  Rome, Florence. This is my first time in Trento for the Summer School (as Director ndr)  but I think this is an excellent one: every year they focus on one topic, which is very  useful. In many Schools you have one topic but then you don’t get any serious deep  discussions. Here, having the whole people whose focus is on the issue for two weeks is  for both the students and for the faculty a very good way for organizing it ... "

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Learn more from our current and previous Professors: Daniel Friedman, Anna Grandori and Enrico Zaninotto provide their impressions.

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