Environmental Economics

環 境 經 濟 學
 1  Instructor: Yusen Sung

Website: http://homepage.ntu.edu.tw/~ysung/
Email: ysung@ntu.edu.tw
Drop-in Open Office Hours: See here
 2  Course Objective: 中文說明

Environmental economics is a relatively new, but now well established branch of microeconomics.
By successfully applying standard economic analysis to the natural environment, economists have challenged many erroneous preconceptions of policy makers.
This course aims to provide students with a sound knowledge and understanding of the major results of environmental economics.

While our major goal is to utilize rigorous microeconomic frameworks for analyzing environmental issues,
we will focus mainly on the following topics in class: policy instruments and their enforcement, uncertainty, and asymmetric information.

 3  Class Time:

1:20 ~ 4:10pm Monday

Classroom etiquette:

 4  Prerequisite:

Calculus and graduate-level microeconomics.

Diagrams are widely used throughout the course.
However, knowledge of constrained maximisation techniques (especially the Lagrangian method) is indispensable and will be reviewed in class when needed.

 5  Grade Policy:

There will be an in-class midterm exam and a term paper, each accounting for 50% of your course grade.

The term paper must be printed out with a cover page, and placed in my mailbox (located in the Econ Department office) before the due date.

 6  Background Reading:

There is no single textbook for this course. However, you may find the following texts useful:
 7  Tentative Lecture Schedule:

  1. Introduction and Mathematics Review (Class notes)

    • Baumol-Oates, ScanJE, 1971 (Paper)

  2. Policy Instrument Design

    In-class Midterm Exam: 5/3 (Download)

  3. Enforcement

    Take-home Final Exam (Download)

 9  Course Grades:

School Year 2020

 Relevant Information