Environmental Policy

3 units

Course will examine the relationship between environmental economics and environmental policy. The course will focus on air pollution, water pollution, and hazardous wastes, with some attention given to biodiversity and global climate change. The course will examine critically two prescriptions that economics usually endorses: (1) balancing of benefits against costs (e.g., benefit-cost analysis) and the use of risk analysis in evaluating policy alternatives; (2) use of market incentives (e.g., prices, taxes, or charges) or property rights instead of traditional command-and-control regulations to implement environmental policy.