Economics of the Environment

3 Credits · Level: Graduate

Former Title: Planetary Economics: Prosperity and Sustainability in a Full World Economists have repeatedly shown how to do more with less by aligning personal incentives with common objectives. In doing so, they have had an instrumental role in the tremendous advancements of humanity and society. But many challenges to improving the human condition do not yield easily to the finely honed tools of economics. Interrelated issues of environment, resources, population, poverty, pestilence, governance, and international affairs may evolve from one crisis to another precisely because an economist’s tools for measuring and adjusting don’t fit neatly into the junctions between human aspirations and a world immovably governed by the rules of biology, chemistry, and physics. In this course, we probe, review, critique, and extend efforts to grapple with these most intractable and largest of issues. In this context, students will complete the course with a perspective on what to do when all the experts hit the limits of their expertise.