Introductory Environmental Economics - Einzelansicht

This class aims to provide an introduction to environmental economics and the analysis of environmental problems. The overall aims are to provide an overview of economic environmental policy instruments across a range of contexts in terms of policymakers and local/global needs.

This class will discuss how a major cause of environmental problems is because not all of the costs caused by economic activity are borne by those responsible for generating them. This is the core problem of externalities. Environmental impacts from economic activity are often an important externality.

There are various instruments and institutional arrangements for dealing with externalities and environmental problems. We still study and discuss the criteria for their selection and evaluation. In doing so we will discussed how these can be applied to environmental policies at various administrative levels, different sectors and country contexts. This course will also tackle several pressing environmental problems that we currently face, e.g. depletion of fish stocks, climate change, and environmental effects of trade and globalization.

The overarching objective of this course is to familiarize participants with the economic analysis of environmental problems. Participants, at the end of the course, should be able to evaluate policy instruments and institutional arrangements perform in terms of effectiveness, efficiency and the societal welfare. Specifically, participants should be able to answer the following questions:

1. What is the fundamental nature of environmental problems from an economic perspective, in relation to notions like externalities, public goods and free riding, and what does this imply for the feasibility of (easy) solutions?
2. Under which conditions are environmental regulations necessary or when are self-regulation / economic instruments more appropriate?
3. How are poverty, development, and the environment interlinked, and what is the role of globalization in stimulating or hampering sustainable development?
4. How to derive optimal levels of pollution and resource use from a societal perspective?
5. Which economic policy instruments are available, and what are their (dis)advantages in view of the selection criteria and in specific country contexts?
6. What are critical and debatable assumptions of core policy insights within environmental economics, such as related to economic costs-benefit analysis of climate policy?

This course is suited for students with a broad range of disciplinary backgrounds, and as such will not heavily focus on mathematical/statistical techniques. On the other hand, the course will try and develop the overall methodological thought process for environmental economists.

My office hours are on Thursday between 13.00 and 15.00. While you are free to just turn up, sending an email beforehand might be useful to ensure that I am there and we can have a productive discussion.

All class content and updates will be made avaiable on Moodle (https://moodle2.uni-potsdam.de/course/view.php?id=23700). It is expected to be a mixure of self-study, zoom seminars, and single and joint exercises. 

1) I will post a recording and PDF of the lecture the week before the class so you have a chance to look at the material.

2) During the first part of the class I will go through the key points of the lecture slides (approx 40 mins) to go into more details, the second part of the class (the next 40-80 mins) we will go through any questions that you have and we will answer exam style questions to better ground the knowledge in our heads by working through examples.

The first class will start on 22nd April at 11:15AM. 

How to join the webinar:

https://uni-potsdam.zoom.us/j/94726130149

Meeting ID: 947 2613 0149
Password: 61061216

If you have questions, please email me at: phudson@uni-potsdam.de

Best,

Paul Hudson