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

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.

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.

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

Provisional

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

Lectures

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 

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