Announcement

The Zurich Center for Computational Financial Economics (ZCCFE) will hold the 2011 Zurich Initiative on Computational Economics (ZICE11) at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, from September 3 to September 11, 2011.

ZICE11 will be a summer program for young scholars interested in applying computational methods to economics. ZICE11 marks the first time, that a workshop similar to the highly successful summer programs (ICE07, …, ICE10) of the Chicago-Argonne Initiative for Computational Economics (ice.uchicago.edu/) is held outside Chicago. ZICE11 has a similar format as the past ICE workshops with lectures and tutorials on topics in numerical analysis, their applications in economics, and their implementation in a variety of software tools. Participants will work on group assignments to facilitate the learning of numerical methods and will be able to speak with the lecturers about their own work during “office hours”.

The aim of ZICE11 is to create a collaborative community of computational scientists and economists by training young scholars (advanced graduate students and post-doctoral students) in state-of-the-art numerical methods and computer technology, and their application to economic modeling and analysis.

Summer initiative activities will begin with formal lectures on a range of topics - numerical optimization, dynamic programming, solution methods for dynamic economic models, and computationally intensive methods in statistics - followed by tutorials that familiarize participants with computer software applied to economic models. These sessions are presented by a mix of computational scientists and economists: Ken Judd, Felix Kubler, Todd Munson, Karl Schmedders and Che-Lin Su. ZICE11 participants will also be organized into small groups that will undertake computational assignments using the methods presented in the tutorials. The summer initiative will close with lectures by ICE graduates demonstrating successful applications of numerical methods to economic problems.

Graduate students from all universities are encouraged to apply to the Zurich Initiative on Computational Economics. All applications will be considered equally; neither the citizenship of an applicant nor his or her current place of study will be a consideration in acceptance decisions.

There will be no fee for participating in ZICE11. We will provide housing for participants at no charge. Participants are responsible for transportation costs and for their meals. ZICE11 is funded by the University of Zurich and NCCR FinRisk.

Sincerely,

Kenneth Judd, Hoover Institution

Felix Kubler, University of Zurich and Swiss Finance Institute

Karl Schmedders, University of Zurich and Swiss Finance Institute

Che-Lin Su, University of Chicago 

We thank the University of Zurich, NCCR FINRISK, for their sponsoring