21201502 - ENVIRONMENTAL ECONOMICS

The course considers the concept of sustainable development, climate change and efficiency in the use of natural resources. To this aim, the main economic theoretical foundations are presented jointly with the fundamental practical issues of climate change, pollution, and sustainable development. The main market failures climate change and environmental pollution generate, externalities and public goods, are presented. The main theoretical and actual policy instruments used to face such phenomena, such as emission tax, emission abatement subsidy, marketable permit instruments, are deeply analyzed from both a normative and a positive point of view. Finally, environmental project appraisal and empirical methods for valuing the environment are introduced.
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Mutuazione: 21201502 ECONOMIA DELL'AMBIENTE in Economia L-33 N0 SPINESI LUCA

Programme

1. Introduction to environmental economics
1.1 The origins of the problem
1.2 Interdependency economy-environment
1.3 GDP growth and welfare measure
1.4 Sustainability
1.5 Pollution extension and types
1.6 Natural resources

2. Ethics and economics
2.1 Natural philosophy
2.2 Libertarian philosophy
2.3 Utilitarianism
2.4 Critique to utilitarianism

3. Social welfare and environmental sustainability
3.1 Pareto efficiency
3.2 Social welfare function
3.3 Kaldor- Hicks-Scitovsky compensation tests
3.4 Market failures
3.5 Second-best theorem

4. Environmental policy
4.1 Public goods
4.2 Externalities
4.3 Environmental pollution models
4.4 Flow and stock of polluting emissions
4.5 Emission efficiency in static models
4.6 Emission efficiency in dynamic models

5 Environmental policy: instruments
5.1 Tax and subsidy
5.2 Command-and-control
5.3 Permits

6 Monetary valuation
6.1 Contingent valuation method
6.2 Hedonic price method
6.3 Cost-Benefit analysis

Core Documentation

Lecture notes available on Moodle.

In substitution to lecture notes:
Title: Natural Resources and Environmental Economics. 4th Edition, 2011
Authors: Perman Roger, Ma Yue, Common Micheal, Maddison David, McGilvray James.
Editor: Pearson


Type of delivery of the course

Written, oral examination

Attendance

Lectures in class

Type of evaluation

Written with exercises and open questions