First lecture of 2020 – 13.01.2020
First lecture on Applied Environmental Economics honestly exceeded my expectations. Not that I had the highest expectations, but it was more interesting than I thought it would be. Partially because of the quality of the lecturer, he is quite engaging.
My laptop died halfway through the lecture, so it’s a good thing I looked over the lecture slides yesterday.
Notes
Start with Outline of Module
General admin stuff. So 2 60 minute lectures and 1 60 minute PC tutorial class per week. Consultation hours are Wednesday 10-11am and Thursday 3-4pm or we are also allowed to drop in during the employability drop in hours, so Thursday 1-3pm. I suppose not a lot of people use the employability drop ins so that’s probably why. Environmental Economics is the lecturer’s personal research area, so that should be good. I think it’s smart to pick lecturers that are actually passionate about what they teach, their lectures are a lot more motivating.
We will have some other generic seminar questions, but this is not the main focus, as we will work more on the use of Excel. The class is essentially just application of microeconomics specifically on the environment using Excel, so good transferrable skills for other applications.
This module is 100% coursework, so no summer exam (partly why I took this class ngl). There will be 4 assignments, each worth 25%. We will have 4 topics, and each topic will be underpinned with an Excel assignment.
- Pollution Economics – so things like taxes and permits
- Non-market valuation – personally find this quite an interesting subject
- Resource management – lecturer mentioned we might look at fisheries and how it ties in with Brexit. Also mentioned some historical disputes between fishing areas of the UK and Iceland
- Climate change – mentioned how this is more topical over time as costs of climate change rise and have more of an impact on life.
The deadline for the submissions have been changed and can be found on SDS.
| Excel based project report 1 | 25% | 07 Feb 2020 | Week 16 |
| Excel based project report 2 | 25% | 06 Mar 2020 | Week 20 |
| Excel based project report 3 | 25% | 27 Mar 2020 | Week 23 |
| Excel based project report 4 | 25% | 10 Apr 2020 | Week E1 |
Preferred text is: Hanley N, Shogren JF and White B (2019) Introduction to Environmental Economics (3rd edition), Oxford University Press.
I have the 2nd edition from the library so that is probably what I will use. As he said, some examples may be dated in older editions, but can still be useful for basic understanding. Mine is from 2013, so not terribly dated, but I suppose it is a field that changes rapidly? This book provides background reading for each of the 4 topics we will handle in this module.
Other recommended texts, which I will probably not use but I am recording just in case I ever want to find further reading in this field:
- Tietenberg T (2006) Environmental and Natural Resource Economics, 7th edn, Pearson Education (new 8th edition available)
- Hanley N, Shogren JF and White B (2001) Introduction to Environmental Economics, Oxford University Press
- Kolstad, C.D. (2011). Intermediate Environmental Economics (International 2nd Edition), Oxford University Press
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