Environmental Economics and Policy

Catalog description

Our free market system has brought us tremendous increases in productivity and innovation over the last century. However, at times the production or consumption of goods or services generates side effects that can lower the welfare of society, or even threaten society's very existence. What should be done? Environmental economics provides one tool to examine this question. There are four broad areas in the field of environmental economics: benefit-cost analysis including the valuation of the environment and the cost of environmental regulation; institutional design in the regulation of the environment; and exhaustible and renewable resource management. This course will provide an overview of these four areas and will examine several applications of the techniques found in the environmental economics literature.