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Join us for the next Baker Center Energy and Environmental Forum, which will take place on Thursday, September 26 at 3.30 pm in Dougherty Engineering Room 416 (not Toyota Auditorium in Baker Center due to a scheduling conflict). James Shortle, Professor of Agricultural and Environmental Economics, and Director of the Environment and Natural Resources Institute, at Penn State University will give a 45 minute presentation and then lead a discussion with participants. His talk is titled: “Towards a Science of Water Quality Trading” Abstract: The potential for pollution trading in markets to efficiently achieve environmental-quality goals is one of the major conceptual innovations for environmental policy coming from economic research. Successful applications in air pollution control have contributed to interest in using trading in other environmental domains. However, water pollution problems generally do not conform closely to the assumptions of conventional economic models of efficient trading. I will describe challenges to the design of water pollution markets that can efficiently manage water pollution. I will describe how recent experiments in water quality trading have attempted to address these issues in water quality protection and offer lessons for market design. Finally, I will offer suggestions for key elements of a multi-disciplinary approach for determining and realizing the promise of water quality markets. James Shortle is the University Distinguished Professor of Agricultural and Environmental Economics, and Director of the Environment and Natural Resources Institute, at Penn State University. He received his PhD in Economics from Iowa State University in 1981 and has been at Penn State since. His current research focuses on the design of economic incentives and markets for water quality protection, environmental policy for agriculture, and impacts of climate change on agriculture and water resources. He is a member of the Environmental Economics Advisory Committee to the US EPA Science Advisory Board, and recently served on the National Research Council Committee on Science for EPAs Future. NOTE: The forum will be meeting in Room 416 of the Dougherty Engineering Building on the Northeast corner side of campus (1512 Middle Drive behind Dabney-Buehler and the SERF building and beside Ming Kao).