ECONOMICS AND POLITICS FOR ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY

1. Knowledge and understanding: To provide the knowledge needed to address environmental challenges through economic analysis, highlighting the limits of the traditional approach and how behavioral and experimental economics can help overcome them.

2. Applying 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.

3. Making judgements: 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.

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

5. Learning skills: To stimulate students to study autonomously and communicate their knowledge clearly.

The course is delivered through traditional face-to-face lectures, supported by slides and supplementary teaching material made available to students on the Studium platform.If the course is delivered in blended or remote mode, appropriate adjustments may be made to the above, in order to ensure consistency with the syllabus.

None, however a basic knowledge of microeconomics is useful for a better and faster learning. 

Strongly suggested but not mandatory.

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, contrasting the ‘traditional’ with the ‘new’ environmental economics. Particular attention will also be devoted to behavioral and experimental approaches, which provide insights into individual and collective decision-making and offer innovative tools for promoting sustainability.

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 environmental double dividend; social ecology; urban sustainability; as well as behavioral and experimental applications to sustainability challenges.

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

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

3. Scientific articles that will be uploaded on Studium.

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.    

Students may choose either:

a)1h Written final exam in class based on 3 open-ended questions. answers would be evaluated based on the following criteria: 1) the student’s knowledge of the subject; 2) command of the appropriate technical-economic language; 3) reasoning and critical-analysis skills. 

b) write down a home essay (whose topic has to be discussed beforehand with the professor) and present it. The presentation would be evaluated accordin to the following criteria: 1) the student’s knowledge of the subject; 2) command of the appropriate technical-economic language; 3) reasoning and critical-analysis skills. 

Learning assessment may also be carried out on-line, should the conditions require it. To ensure equal opportunities and in compliance with current laws, interested students may request a personal interview in order to plan any compensatory and/or dispensatory measures based on educational objectives and specific needs. Students can also contact the CInAP (Centro per l’integrazione Attiva e Partecipa ta — Servizi per le Disabilità e/o i DSA) referring teacher within their department (https://www.cinap.unict.it/content/referenti)

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 are social dilemma experiments?