ECON 322: Syllabus

Due to family health issues, I am unable to offer this class in person. This class is being taught as "Remote Asynchronous". This means, I will be recording lectures per lecture day where you can watch them on your schedule. Office hours (and a first day "live" zoom session) will occur over video conference at appointed times.

This course covers economic approaches to environmental and natural resource problems. In this course we will investigate the interaction between economic decisions made by firms or consumers and the environment. The main topic areas are as follows:

• Environmental Value and Market Failure

  The term environmental value has been used broadly by different groups in the popular and scientific literature. We will define what economists mean by value for the environment, and will contrast that definition with philosophical notions of environmental value. We will discuss common causes of market failure for environmental goods including problems of public goods and externalities.

• Regulatory approaches for environmental problems.

  We analyze various regulatory approaches to address environmental problems (e.g. standards, market-based incentives) and discuss the relative economic efficiency of those approaches. We will also briefly discuss current U.S. environmental regulatory approaches. After tackling environmental air pollution problems, we will turn to natural resource regulation (fisheries).

• Measuring Environmental Value and Cost Benefit Analysis

  We will discuss approaches for measuring economic value for the environment, cost-benefit analysis, discounting, and fairness across generations.

• Topics in environmental Economics.

  In this section we will use our environmental economics tool-kit and apply it to numerous issues. As time permits, we will investigate:

  1. Climate Change
  2. Eco-Labeling
  3. Biodiversity
  4. Water Policy
  5. More??

For the final exam you may take the exam with either section.

• Lectures : All lectures are (or will be) pre-recorded and available on the course google drive site. Note that these videos are for your own personal use in this class and all rights for the videos and other course materials are reserved by me (Copyright 2020 by Rob Hicks. All rights reserved.). If you have registered for the class you should be able to access the videos linked below. Here is a list of videos (in order) for each week of class:

  Unit	Topic	Week	Video Subject and Link	Running Time (minutes)
  I	Intro	1 (Aug 19)	Zoom Welcome	30.0
  			Syllabus and Logistics1	42.5
  	Micro Review		Demand 1	23.9
  		2 (Aug 24)	Demand 2	18.9
  			MWTP and TWTP	21.1
  			Pandas 1	14.0
  			Pandas 2	17.6
  			Consumer Surplus	11.9
  			Supply	16.9
  			Equilibrium	13.3
  	Externalities and Public Goods		Introduction	11.4
  			Market Equilibrium	10.9
  			Full Cost Accounting	20.8
  		3 (Aug 31)	Putting it together	16.4
  			Putting it together 2	18.4
  			Coase 1	36.7
  			Coase 2	10.7
  			Pigouvian Taxes	18.9
  			Public Goods	29.8
  II	Regulations and Incentives		US Environmental Regulation 1	32.4
  		4 (Sep 7)	US Environmental Regulation 2	21.7
  			New Source Review	13.2
  			Acid Rain Program	21.6
  		5 (Sep 14)	Intro to Regulation	27.9
  			A demo of MCC	18.5
  			Regulation and Efficiency	14.1
  			Standards 1	19.4
  			Standards 2	11.5
  			Bubble Policy	26.5
  			Pollution Fees 1	28.0
  			Pollution Fees 2	16.2
  		6 (Sep 21)	Fees and Innovation	30.4
  			Quantity Instruments vs. Fees	27.1
  			Cost Savings from MBI	11.6
  	Regulating Natural Resources		Introduction	24.1
  			Market Failure and Behavior	45.5
  			Deadliest Catch	25.0
  		7 (Sep 28)	Derby Fishing, Safety, and Distortions	19.1
  			Stock Dynamics	37.2
  			Incorporating Harvest 1	25.1
  			Incorporating Harvest 2	55.2
  			Sustainable Total Revenue and Profits	26.5
  		8 (Oct 4)	Open Access Equilibrium	31.1
  			When is MSY Efficient?	15.1
  			Technical Change and TR Curve	32.9
  			Time Limits	42.4
  			Raising the Cost of Fishing	18.6
  			Taxes and ITQ's	47.6
  		9 (Oct 11)	Cooperative outcomes	18.3
  			MidTerm 2 Overview	20.0
  III	Measuring Economic Value	10 (Oct 18)	CVM Intro	23.3
  	Benefit Cost Analysis		CVM Background	17.8
  			CVM Steps	10.5
  			CVM Data Analysis I	38.2
  			CVM Data Analysis II	27.8
  			CVM Problems and Wrap-up	39.5
  		11 (Oct 25)	Benefit Cost Intro	30.4
  			Benefit Cost Decision Rule	24.0
  			Benefit Cost Discounting I	19.7
  			Benefit Cost Discounting II	23.1
  			Benefit Cost in the Real World	13.6
  			Benefit Cost and Dynamic Efficiency	34.8
  			MidTerm 2 Debrief	12.2
  IV	Water Pollution	12 (Nov 1)	Introduction	35.5
  			Equimarginal Principle for NUMPs	41.4
  			Fees for NUMPs	28.4
  			Tradable Pollution Permits for NUMPs	25.2
  			Watershed Management	50.9
  	Climate Change	13 (Nov 8)	Introduction	33.7
  			Climate and Benefit Cost Analysis	21.7
  			Kyoto and Paris	36.5
  			Carbon Taxes	22.4
  			Carbon Permits I	30.0
  			Carbon Permits II and Wrapup	13.8

  The list of videos will be extended as they are produced. Please note that the first few weeks of class have less than ideal (but still ok with headphones) audio/video quality and later videos are improving in this regard.

• Turning in your work: No hardcopies of any assignments will be accepted this semester. Items slipped under my door or placed in my mailbox will not be retrieved or graded and will not count towards successful and timely completion of course assignments.
  • Both Midterms and Final: The exam assignments must be submitted via the appropriate assignment in blackboard by the time stipulated in the blackboard assignment item. To turn in either problem sets or mid-terms, please print out the assignment sheet and complete the assignment by hand in the spaces provided (legible handwriting please!). If you need to add additional pages for your answer, include them at the end. Once you are ok with your responses scan into a pdf and submit via blackboard.
  • Problem Sets: These can be completed on paper of your choosing. You may either use the spaces provided in a printed version of the pdf, or use your own paper, while carefully labeling work to match to problems. Only scanned pdf's of your work are accepted.²
    

• Office Hours: Online Zoom meets on Wednesdays 10:00am - 11:00am, Thursdays 12:30pm - 1:30pm, or by appointment.
  

• Email Policy: I will respond to emails but only if they contain the tag #econ322# in the subject line. If they do not, the google will likely delete your email. Please don't expect an email response from me for questions that can't be answered in 3 sentences or less.
  

• Grades Your grade will be based on two Mid-terms (30% each), a Final (30%), and problem sets (10%). Additionally, the final exam will be cumulative. Problem sets will be graded on a simple 3 level scale: completed (most items correctly answered), attempted (either sloppy work, partially attempted, or lots of incorrect answers), or not attempted. Most students making an attempt on the Problem Sets will receive full credit. Grades will be awarded based on standard grading scales (after a curve is applied if a curve is deemed necessary). Usually any curve that is applied in this class is quite small, so plan on your raw score being very close to the curved score. I will usually announce curves on a per assignment basis after grading, so you'll know where you stand.

  Letter grade	Percentage of points after curve
  A	93–100%
  A−	90–92%
  B+	87–89%
  B	83–86%
  B−	80–82%
  C+	77–79%
  C	73–76%
  C-	70–72%
  D+	67–69%
  D	63–66%
  D-	60–62%
  F	0–59%

• Policy on Missed Assignments
  • Mid-terms: If for whatever reason you are unable to take a mid-term exam, all weight for the missed exam will be distributed to the remaining mid-terms and/or the final. This policy applies to one missed mid-term only, so your second missed mid-term will receive a grade of 0. If you sit for a mid-term you must complete it. I find that students who miss mid-terms usually fare worse in the course so please use the missed mid-term policy judiciously. If you find the mid-term times inconvenient, please drop this class
  • Final Exam: The final exam must be completed at the scheduled time. University policy prohibits me changing a final exam time unless approved by the Dean of Students.
  • Problem sets must be turned in by the assigned due date. Late work not accepted.

• We will be using the textbook Environmental and Natural Resource Economics, 11th edition. Instead, you may wish to pick up an older edition to save money. If you go this route, note that you are responsible for ensuring that your readings follow what is intended for the class. This shouldn't be too difficult for you as the models we are studying this semester are well-established and this book doesn't change often. Of course, if you go with an older edition, the real-world examples will be more dated.
• Additional readings, presentations, and other info is available at the course google drive site and are grouped by topic. The recommended way to access materials is through the lecture table above.

To access the readings listed below, click on the relevant "Topic" in the video list table above.