F. Gesztesy, R. Ratnaseelan, G. Teschl The KdV Hierarchy and Associated Trace Formulas (104K, amslatex) ABSTRACT. A natural algebraic approach to the KdV hierarchy and its algebro-geometric finite-gap solutions is developed. In addition, a new derivation of associated higher-order trace formulas in connection with one-dimensional Schr\"odinger operators is presented.