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Topic Number |
Date
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Topics
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Readings
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Analytical Tools
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0
(Top)
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Week 1
8/21-8/27
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Analytical Tools I
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0
(Top)
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Week 2
8/28-9/3
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Analytical Tools II
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0
(Top)
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Week 3
9/4-9/10
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Analytical Tools III
Labor Day, Monday 9/4, No Classes
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Environmental and Natural Resource Economics
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1
(Top)
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Week 4
9/11-9/17
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Introduction to
Environmental and Natural Resource Economics
Slides:
Topic 0,
Topic 1
Pre-Study Questions:
1. What are some examples of conflicts between economic activity and
environmental protection that the authors mention in the introduction?
Can you think of any other examples not mentioned in the text?
2. How does the field of environmental economics help address
environmental problems? What are some of the key insights it provides
according to the authors?
3. The authors state that economics is "the study of the allocation of
scarce resources." Why is this focus particularly relevant for analyzing
environmental issues? Can you give some examples to illustrate this?
4. The authors argue that many environmental problems arise because
markets are "incomplete." What does this mean? Use the example of
climate change to explain this idea.
5. The text states "economics offers quite a different approach than
other disciplines" to environmental issues. In your view, what are the
biggest differences between an economic perspective and other
perspectives on environmental problems? What are the strengths and
limitations of the economic approach?
You should
always read the study questions before you do anything else. The study
questions will get you thinking about some of the important issues in
this section.
|
Chapter 1 |
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2
(Top)
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Week 5
9/18-9/24
|
Economic Efficiency
and Environmental Protection
Slides:
Topic 2
Pre-Study Questions:
1. How is the economic concept of "efficiency" defined, and how does it
differ from common usage of the term efficiency? Provide an example to
illustrate the difference.
2. Explain why the economically efficient level of pollution is
generally not zero. What assumptions about costs and benefits lead to
this result? Can you think of cases where zero pollution would be
economically efficient?
3. What is meant by "marginal" costs and benefits? How do marginal costs
and benefits relate to total costs and benefits? Use a graph or
numerical example to illustrate.
4. What is discounting and what role does it play in evaluating the
efficiency of policies over time? How does the choice of discount rate
affect the present value of future costs and benefits?
5. Should economic efficiency be the only goal considered in
environmental policy? What other ethical, distributional, or practical
concerns might lead society to choose a different level of environmental
protection than would maximize net benefits?
You should
always read the study questions before you do anything else. The study
questions will get you thinking about some of the important issues in
this section.
Assignment 1 (T2), Due in D2L 10/1
|
Chapter 2
|
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3
(Top)
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Week
6
9/25-10/1
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The
Benefits and Costs of Environmental Protection
Slides:
Topic 3
Pre-Study Questions:
1. The reading
discusses how social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter can
enable the spread of misinformation. In your opinion, what is the best
way to combat the spread of misinformation on social media?
2. The reading talks
about how social media algorithms can create "filter bubbles" where
people only see content that matches their existing beliefs. Do you
think this is a problem? Why or why not? How could social media
companies address this issue?
3. The reading mentions
that social media may be contributing to political polarization by
enabling people to only interact with those who share their views. What
do you think could be done to encourage more bipartisan discussion and
understanding on social media platforms?
4. The reading raises
concerns about social media negatively impacting mental health,
especially for teenagers. In your view, what should be done to help
promote healthy social media use among teenagers? What role do you think
parents, schools, and social media companies should play?
5. The reading
discusses various potential negative impacts of social media, like
encouraging tribalism and facilitating the spread of conspiracy
theories. On the other hand, social media also has many benefits for
connection, education, activism, etc. In your opinion, how can we
maximize the positives of social media while mitigating the negatives?
You should
always read the study questions before you do anything else. The study
questions will get you thinking about some of the important issues in
this section.
Article Summary 1, Due in D2L
9/29
Assignment 2 (T3), Due in D2L 10/8
|
Chapter 3
|
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4
(Top)
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Week
7
10/2-10/8
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The Efficiency
of Markets
Slides:
Topic 4
Pre-Study Questions:
1. The reading
discusses how competitive markets can lead to efficient outcomes when
certain conditions are met. Do you think these conditions generally hold
in real-world markets? Why or why not? Can you think of any examples of
real markets that fail to meet one or more of the conditions?
2. The reading states
that market failures often occur in environmental contexts because the
costs and benefits of environmental protection are left out of
individual decision-making. Can you think of some examples of how this
happens? How does it lead to inefficient outcomes?
3. The reading
contrasts markets with other allocation mechanisms like central
planning. In your view, what are the main advantages and disadvantages
of using markets versus centralized mechanisms to make economic
decisions? When might a centrally planned approach work better than
markets?
4. The reading argues
that competitive markets are generally desirable for allocating goods
and services. Do you agree? In what ways might markets lead to unfair or
undesirable outcomes even if they are economically efficient?
5. The reading focuses
on markets for ordinary private goods like coffee. How well do you think
markets work for allocating public and environmental goods like clean
air or biodiversity protection? What differences might lead market
outcomes for public goods to be less efficient?
You should
always read the study questions before you do anything else. The study
questions will get you thinking about some of the important issues in
this section.
Improvement Day, Tuesday 10/3, No
Classes
Assignment 3 (T4), Due in D2L 10/15
|
Chapter 4 |
|
5
(Top)
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Week 8
10/9-10/15
|
Market
Failures in the Environmental Realm
Slides:
Topic 5
Pre-Study Questions:
1. The reading
discusses different types of market failures like monopoly power,
asymmetric information, and incomplete markets. Which of these failures
do you think is most problematic in real-world markets today? Why?
2. The reading states
that competitive markets can lead to efficient outcomes under certain
conditions. Do you think the assumption of perfect competition is
realistic? Why or why not? How does lack of perfect competition affect
market outcomes?
3. The reading
contrasts markets with other allocation mechanisms like central
planning. In your view, what are the main tradeoffs involved in relying
primarily on markets versus government planning to organize economic
activity? In which areas do you think markets work best? Where might
planning be preferable?
4. The reading argues
that consumers and producers responding to price signals leads to
efficient market outcomes. Do you think individuals and businesses fully
consider all the costs and benefits of their economic decisions? Why or
why not? What factors might lead to external costs or benefits being
ignored?
5. The reading focuses
on how competitive markets can theoretically maximize economic surplus.
Do you think maximizing surplus is the most important criterion for
evaluating economic systems? What other criteria might matter, like
fairness, sustainability, or safeguarding public goods?
You should
always read the study questions before you do anything else. The study
questions will get you thinking about some of the important issues in
this section.
Assignment 4 (T5), Due in D2L 10/22
|
Chapter 5
|
|
6
(Top)
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Week 9
10/16-10/22
|
Managing
Stocks: Natural Resources as Capital Assets
Slides:
Topic 6
Pre-Study Questions:
1. The reading
discusses how economic scarcity depends not just on physical
availability but also on extraction costs and resource prices. In your
view, how well do market prices tend to reflect true resource scarcity?
What factors might cause prices to diverge from true scarcity values?
2. The reading
introduces the concept of marginal user cost and explains why it leads
efficient resource owners to conserve some supplies for the future. Do
you think real-world resource owners adequately consider marginal user
cost in their extraction decisions? Why or why not?
3. The reading explains
the Hotelling rule, which states that marginal user cost should rise at
the rate of interest in efficient markets. In your opinion, how well
does this rule characterize real-world nonrenewable resource markets?
What factors might cause deviations?
4. The reading argues
that property rights are critical in determining whether nonrenewable
resource extraction will be efficient. Do you agree? What types of
property rights structures tend to work best for nonrenewable resource
conservation? What types tend to lead to over-exploitation?
5. The reading focuses
on economic efficiency as the goal of resource management. Do you think
there are other important criteria besides efficiency that should factor
into decisions about nonrenewable resource use? What are some of these
other criteria?
You should
always read the study questions before you do anything else. The study
questions will get you thinking about some of the important issues in
this section.
Article Summary 2, Due in D2L 10/20 (List
of Articles)
Assignment 5 (T6), Due in D2L 10/29
|
Chapter 6
|
|
7
(Top)
|
Week 10
10/23-10/29
|
Stocks That Grow: The Economics of Renewable Resource
Management
Slides: Topic 7
Pre-Study Questions:
1. The chapter
discusses the Faustmann model for determining the optimal rotation
period for harvesting trees. How might accounting for non-timber
benefits like habitat preservation or carbon sequestration change the
Faustmann rotation? Why?
2. The chapter
explains the difference between open access and common property resource
management regimes. How might a common property arrangement help avoid
overexploitation, and what are some examples of resources governed as
common property?
3. In the fisheries
model, why does open access lead to excessive entry of fishing boats and
overexploitation of fish stocks? How do subsidies potentially exacerbate
this problem?
4. How does insecure
property rights potentially contribute to deforestation in developing
countries? What kinds of policies could help address this issue?
5. The chapter
discusses inefficiency in real-world fisheries. What evidence is
provided that many fisheries suffer from excessive fishing effort? How
well does the theoretical model of open access predict what we see in
actual fisheries?
You should
always read the study questions before you do anything else. The study
questions will get you thinking about some of the important issues in
this section.
Assignment 6 (T7), Due in D2L 11/5
|
Chapter 7 |
|
8
(Top)
|
Week 11
10/30-11/5
|
Principles of Market-Based Environmental Policy
Slides:
Topic 8
Pre-Study Questions:
1. What does the Coase
Theorem state, and under what conditions does it hold? Why does Coase
argue that government intervention may not be needed to solve
environmental problems?
2. How do Pigouvian
taxes work to internalize negative externalities? Can you walk through
the graphical example in the chapter to explain this?
3. What is the
underlying logic behind emission taxes and cap-and-trade systems? How do
these policies help overcome different types of market failures
(externalities, public goods, tragedy of the commons)?
4. The chapter
discusses efficiency considerations in choosing between price
instruments like taxes and quantity instruments like cap-and-trade. What
is the Weitzman rule and when is it relevant? Explain the intuition.
5. What considerations
lead the chapter to conclude that market-based instruments are generally
preferable to command-and-control regulations? Are there any limitations
or downsides to market-based policies?
You should
always read the study questions before you do anything else. The study
questions will get you thinking about some of the important issues in
this section.
Spring Summer Registration, Monday
10/30
Assignment 7 (T8), Due in D2L 11/12
|
Chapter 8 |
|
9
(Top)
|
Week 12
11/6-11/12
|
The Case for Market-Based Instruments in the Real
World
Slides: Topic 9
Pre-Study Questions:
1. What does it mean
for a policy to be cost-effective? Explain the intuition behind why
emission taxes and cap-and-trade tend to be cost-effective using the
graphical example in the chapter.
2. How do market-based
instruments provide greater incentives for developing new pollution
control technologies compared to command-and-control regulations? What
are the differences between taxes, cap-and-trade, and technology
standards in this regard?
3. The chapter
discusses individual fishing quotas (IFQs) for fisheries management. In
what ways are IFQs analogous to market-based pollution control policies?
How do they help solve common pool resource problems?
4. What is the problem
of pollution "hot spots" and how might it limit the effectiveness of
emission taxes or cap-and-trade programs for some pollutants? Discuss
possible solutions.
5. When might
command-and-control regulations be preferred over market-based
instruments? What are some examples given in the chapter? What factors
determine the choice between policy instruments?
You should
always read the study questions before you do anything else. The study
questions will get you thinking about some of the important issues in
this section.
Article Summary 3, Due in D2L
11/10 (List
of Articles)
Assignment 8 (T9), Due in D2L 11/19
|
Chapter 9
|
|
10
(Top)
|
Week 13
11/13-11/19 |
Market-Based
Instruments in Practice
Slides:
Topic 10
Pre-Study Questions:
1. What were some of
the key outcomes of the U.S. SO2 cap-and-trade program, in terms of
environmental performance, cost savings, and technological change? How
did it compare to alternative policies?
2. Discuss the
performance of individual fishing quota (IFQ) markets in New Zealand.
How have they helped address common pool resource problems compared to
traditional fishery policies? What distributional impacts or other
concerns have arisen?
3. Explain the
rationale for using market-based "drought pricing" for urban water
management. How might it compare to alternative policies in terms of
economic efficiency? What are some distributional considerations?
4. Discuss some of the
novel applications of market-based instruments for land management and
habitat preservation, such as wetland mitigation banking. What are some
of the challenges or concerns that arise with trading ecosystems?
5. Based on the
real-world examples discussed in the chapter, in what ways have
market-based instruments been useful in environmental policy? What
limitations remain, and what role might they play in the future?
You should
always read the study questions before you do anything else. The study
questions will get you thinking about some of the important issues in
this section.
Assignment 9 (T10), Due in D2L 11/26
|
Chapter 10 |
|
11
(Top)
|
Week 14
11/20-11/26 |
Sustainability
and Economic Growth
Slides:
Topic
11
Pre-Study Questions:
1. What does the Limits
to Growth model predict about the future of economic growth, and what
are its main assumptions? How does the "economic optimism" view differ?
2. Explain the economic
definition of sustainability. How does it differ from other common
definitions, and what role do substitution and technological change
play?
3. What is green
accounting and green NNP? Why have economists argued for adjusting
traditional economic growth measures like NNP to account for natural
capital?
4. How might
considerations of sustainability, as discussed in the chapter, influence
thinking on current environmental policy? What insights does the
economic perspective offer?
5. Do you think
continued global economic growth is compatible with environmental
sustainability? Why or why not? What evidence or arguments from the
chapter support your view?
You should always read
the study questions before you do anything else. The study questions
will get you thinking about some of the important issues in this
section.
Assignment 10 (T11), Due in D2L 12/1
|
Chapter 11
|
|
12
(Top)
|
Week 15
11/27-12/1 |
Conclusion
Article Summary 4, Due in D2L 12/1 (List
of Articles)
Paper (Optional), Due in D2L 12/1
|
|
