Environmental Economics

3 Credits · Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

This course focuses on the application of economics to environmental problems, both in theory and in practice. It covers the market failures that contribute to environmental degradation by air and water pollution, excessive extraction of nonrenewable resources such as fossil fuels, and over-harvesting of renewable resources such as forests and fisheries. The course also studies the design and performance of various market-based and other types of policies that may be used to address such problems. Students are introduced to the basic microeconomic and statistical methods that economists use to study relationships between the economy and the environment, including benefit-cost analysis and other aspects of applied welfare economics, theory of environmental policy design, non-market valuation methods, and basic elements of general equilibrium theory. The first half of the course focuses on basic theory, non-market valuation, and natural resources. The second half analyzes policy design, distorted markets, and applied case studies of topical issues such as climate change and energy policy.