193th EAAE Seminar

SALVATORE DI FALCO

Salvatore Di Falco is a Professor of Economics whose research lies at the intersection of agricultural, environmental, and development economics. His work explores how natural resources—particularly biodiversity—contribute to agricultural productivity, food security, and resilience to weather shocks in arid regions.

He also examines how climate change influences economic behaviour and adaptation strategies. He has published over 60 articles in international peer-reviewed journals and has served as an Editor of the European Review of Agricultural Economics from 218 to 2024 and Associate Editor of the American Journal of Agricultural Economics from 2013 to 2018.

STEPHANE HESS

He is an internationally recognised expert in the data driven study and mathematical modelling of human choice behaviour. He has made contributions to the state of the art in the specification, estimation and interpretation of such models, as well as in facilitating the transition of ideas and approaches across disciplines, notably by also working in mathematical psychology and behavioural economics. Although a majority of his applied work has been conducted in the field of transport, he is also very active in health and environmental economics. Together with David Palma, he is the author of Apollo, a highly flexible and powerful free tool for estimating and applying choice models.

He is Professor of Choice Modelling and Director of the Choice Modelling Centre at the University of Leeds, where he is based in the Institute for Transport Studies. He is also a part-time Professor of Decision modeling, artificial intelligence (AI) and mobility research at Delft University of Technology, and Honorary Professor of Modelling Behaviour in Africa at the University of Cape Town.

Together with his research team at the Choice Modelling Centre, he is setting the research agenda in applying choice modelling in new fields, including education, lifestyle choices, social (network) interactions and joint decision making. Advanced choice models require high quality data, and Hess and his team are leading the field in exploring and exploiting novel data sources, with numerous applications using ‘big data’. He is also the founding editor in chief of the Journal of Choice Modelling and the founder and steering committee chair of the International Choice Modelling Conference. He serves on the editorial advisory board of two other leading journals; Transportation Research Part B and Transportation, as well as academic committees at leading international conferences.