MSc Global Development (Environment and Climate Change) / Course details

Year of entry: 2024

Course unit details:
Economics of Environmental Policy

Course unit fact file
Unit code ECON60782
Credit rating 15
Unit level FHEQ level 7 – master's degree or fourth year of an integrated master's degree
Teaching period(s) Semester 2
Available as a free choice unit? Yes

Overview

To develop students’ intellectual understanding of the economics of public policy issues regarding the protection of the environment.

Students will investigate both conceptual and methodological topics in environmental economics and consider recent applications in numerous case studies.

Aims

To develop students’ intellectual understanding of the economics of public policy issues regarding the protection of the environment.

Students will investigate both conceptual and methodological topics in environmental economics, and consider recent applications in numerous case studies.

Learning outcomes

 

On successful completion of this course, students should be able to understand and discuss:

  1. theory on the economic significance and causes of environmental degradation, including the consideration of market failure, regulatory failure and organisational failures;
  2. alternative approaches to pollution management, including first-best and second-best solutions and the selection of policy instruments;
  3. complications for the selection of environmental policy instruments including: dynamic analysis; imperfect information (uncertainty and non-point sources of pollution); sub-optimal firm behaviour; and non-uniformity of pollutants;
  4. analytical methods (including cost-benefit and cost-effectiveness analysis) to assess the efficiency and effectiveness of alternative environmental policy approaches both ex ante and ex post.
  5. international environmental issues: transboundary pollution, pollution havens, trade and the environment, environmental Kuznets curve

 

Syllabus

Topic 0: Introduction and coursework guidance

Topic 1: Causes of environmental problems: market failure, regulatory behaviour, and behavioural failure 

Topic 2: Designing environmental policy: first best and second best solution to environmental problems, and the selection of policy instruments

Topic 3:  Designing environmental policy: complications in practice and voluntary approaches

Topic 4: Cost benefit analysis and alternative criteria

Topic 5: International economics and environmental issues: transboundary pollution, pollution havens, trade and the environment

Teaching and learning methods

Lectures

Assessment methods

Method Weight
Written exam 70%
Written assignment (inc essay) 30%

Recommended reading

Recommended textbooks (all three will become available to you on Blackboard once you have registered for the course unit):

 

Callan, Scott J. and Janet M. Thomas (2013) Environmental Economics and Management: Theory, Policy, and Applications (6th Edition), South-Western, International Edition.

Keohane, Nathaniel O. and Sheila M. Olmsted (2016) Markets and the Environment, Washington etc.: Island Press

Some chapters from: Perman, Ma, Common, Maddison and McGilvray. Natural Resource and Environmental Economics, Fourth Edition. Addison Wesley 

 

Study hours

Scheduled activity hours
Lectures 18
Independent study hours
Independent study 132

Teaching staff

Staff member Role
Grada Wossink Unit coordinator

Additional notes

To take this module you need a background in undergraduate microeconomics.

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