Economics of environment and sustainability

The unit will begin with a general approach to environmental economics, with a focus on the importance of externalities, property rights, and public goods. The unit will then be broken into sections focusing on major environmental problems such as climate change, air/water pollution, over-exploitation of open access resources and sustainable development. Within each section, there will be a discussion of optimal environmental policies from a theoretical perspective, actual environmental policies that exist around the world, and the current empirical evidence related to each topic.