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CU-Boulder ECON 4545 - Syllabus

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1 ENVIRONMENTAL ECONOMICS Econ 4545 Edward Morey Spring 2002- January 8, 2003 Course Description Environmental Economics (4545) considers the efficient and equitable use of society's scarce environmental resources. Environmental resources include air, water, land, wilderness areas, parks, wildlife and genetic diversity, and other scarce ecological systems. Use of these resources will be considered from four perspectives: the market allocation, efficient allocations, equitable allocations, and government attempts to achieve a more efficient and equitable allocation. Environmental economics is a course in applied welfare economics and will consider market failure (particularly externalities and common property resources), and the economic valuation of environmental amenities such as clean air, wilderness and ecological systems. Courses in environmental economics and natural resource economics both consider natural resources but differ in that natural resource courses have historically dealt with the inter-temporal utilization of conventional renewable and nonrenewable natural resources such as fish, trees and minerals, whereas environmental courses have considered pollution and other environmental issues from a static perspective. This historical distinction is starting to blur. Before we begin, I want to make a few comments about what economics is not. Economics is not about making money or how to run a firm. Economics is the study of the allocation of society's scarce resources. Economics per sec is not pro-market or pro-government. The purpose of this course is not to argue that government action to protect the environment is bad; sometimes its bad, and sometimes it is good. The purpose of this course is not to extol the virtues of the market. Markets have many virtues, but, when it comes to the environment, they also have many faults. In some ways, this course could be described as a course on market failure and government actions to correct those failures. Environmental economics is about measuring the costs of decreasing pollution, cleaning up the environment and protecting scarce ecological systems such as wetlands and wilderness. I want to stress that environmental economics is also about measuring the benefits of decreasing pollution, cleaning up the environment and protecting scarce ecological systems. Society=s production of goods and services and the distribution of those goods and services should not be considered as separate from the environment because, put simply, what we take from the environment to produce our goods and services ultimately ends up emitted back into the environment in terms of emissions, pollution and wastes. Put simply, the total weight of what is taken from the environment to produce goods and services must eventually equal to weight of2what we put back into the environment (Awhat goes in must come out@). The same is true of energy. Details Web page: My web site is located at http://www.colorado.edu/Economics/morey/index.html . From it you can link to the web page for Econ 4545, or you can go directly to the web page for the course, http://www.colorado.edu/Economics/morey/4545/4545home.html All past and current assignments, review questions, and, hopefully, most of the readings will be made available at this site on an as-need basis. You will also want to visit the web sites for the other natural resource and environmental courses that I teach. You will find a lot of overlap. The undergraduate natural resources course for economics majors can be found at http://www.colorado.edu/Economics/morey/4535/4535home.html . The natural resource and environment course for M.A. students at http://www.colorado.edu/Economics/morey/6535/6535home.html , and the PhD level environmental course at http://www.colorado.edu/Economics/morey/8545/8545home.html Jennifer Thacher, a finishing PhD student, will be assisting with grading and course assignments. Review questions and problems will be handed out for each section of the course. I strongly encourage you to write out answers to these questions and discuss them with your classmates. You will want to form study groups. Your grade will be highly correlated with you knowledge of the review questions. It is important, for life, to be able to write well. Improvement comes with practice and I will give you ample opportunity to practice. Final: There will be a comprehensive final which will constitute 25% of your course grade. Midterm: The midterm will constitute 15% of your course grade Assignments: There will be N short exams assignments (quizzes, small projects, problems, debates, etc.) during the term, and your grades on your best (N-1) of these assignments will constitute 35% of your course grade. Use the review questions to study for the quizzes. Some of the assignments will be in class, some will be take-home. Some of the assignments will be done in groups. The group, usually three people, will work together and just turn in one assignment. Everyone in the group will get the same grade for that assignments. Group assignments are one of my ways of giving you an incentive to work and study together. Paper/web page: There will be a paper (5-10 pages - no more) that will constitute 25% of your3course grade. I will put the best of the papers on the course web page. One advantage of the web is that you can include links in your paper to related material. Numerous formats are possible. For example, you could write a standard paper in a word processor such as Word, including the links. I would then convert it into a PDF document for publication on the course web page. Alternatively, you could create a web page in html. Choose some environmental problem and evaluate it in economic terms. Please discuss your topic with Jennifer or me. Once you have settled on a topic, do a rough outline and come see us again. The final copy of your paper will be due in my office on the day of the final. If you get a preliminary version to us two weeks before the end of the term, we will get it back to you within a week with comments. There will be assignments having to do with your paper topic. I am fairly flexible about what constitutes a paper, with the provision that it has economic and environmental content. It could be a group endeavor; if so, I would require effort commensurate with the size of the group. What is important to me is to see that you have


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