ECONOMICS AND POLITICS FOR ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY

To provide knowledge needed to understand how economic analysis can provide tools to respond to the environmental challenges that we face, and also to understand the limitations of the ‘traditional’ economic approach (knowledge and understanding); to prepare students to apply, in a critical and original fashion, what is learnt to the analysis of local, national and international policies (applying knowledge and understanding).

To stimulate students to exercise their critical skills so that they are capable to identify the main assumptions of the theory, the instruments adopted and the limits of the theory. The goal is to make students able to integrate the knowledge acquired and apply it to ascertain the potential environmental impact of market decisions as well as policies, and to propose remedies to minimize it, in view of being ready for the job market. To prepare student to interpret data and to help them developing critical analysis skills (Making judgments).

To foster the ability of students of exposition of personal opinions to experts as well as to a non-specialized public (Communication skills).

To stimulate students to study autonomously and communicate their knowledge clearly (Learning skills).

Lessons in classroom; seminars by invited speakers.

None. Students are however encouraged to review basic microeconomics.

The course applies, in a critical fashion, economic principles to the evaluation of market activities and policies, with respect to the goal of preserving natural resources and ecosystems to support society’s wellbeing, also in a dynamic perspective. The programme will combine mainstream and unorthodox approaches, the ‘traditional’ and the ‘new’ environmental economics. Among the topics illustrated in the course are: property rights; externalities; methods for the valuation of the environment; cost benefit analysis; common pool resources; transition to renewable resources; price control; biodiversity and ecosystems; environmental inequality; environmental regulation and climate policies; the environment double dividend; social ecology; urban sustainability.   

           1. Éloi Laurent, The new environmental economics. Polity Press, 2020.

2.      2. Tom Tietenberg and Lynne Lewis, Environmental & natural resource economics. Pearson, 2012 (9th edition).

Notice. In book 2, example boxes and Mathematical Appendixes are not mandatory for students. Please do not include them in contents of the programme indicated in this syllabus.    

Written final exam in class and/or take home essay 

1.      When is an allocation of resources efficient?

2.      What structure of property rights could produce efficient allocations in a market economy and when?

3.      What is an externality? Why does it generate market failure?

4.      What is the definition of public goods and why do they generate market failure?

5.      What is a cost-benefit analysis and what is it needed for?

6.      What are the main problems in evaluating benefits, costs and discount rate in cost-benefit analysis?

7.      How do we value the environment?

8.      What are the reasons for public controls on the gas price?

9.      What is the problem of governing the commons?

10.   What it the so-called double dividend?

11.    Can you explain the phenomenon of environmental inequality?

12.   What is a socio-ecological state?