Cost-Benefit Analysis for Sustainability

Catalog description

This course provides an in-depth exploration of cost-benefit analysis (CBA) principles and methodologies with a focus on environmental sustainability. Cost-benefit analysis is an important and widely used method for assessing whether regulatory policies and other market interventions provide net benefits to society. Many of these interventions also have direct implications for profitability of products sold in traditional markets (e.g., energy markets, housing markets, and industrial products that are heavily dependent on environmental resources). In this course, students will develop a fundamental understanding of the history and purpose of cost benefit analysis, its theoretical grounding in neoclassical economics, and its important basis for rational government spending.