APEC 8601: Natural Resource Economics

Location: B36 Ruttan Hall

Meeting Times: Tuesday/Thursday 8:45 - 10:00 am

Canvas link: https://canvas.umn.edu/courses/412194

Course repository: https://github.com/jandrewjohnson/apec_8601_2024

Course Content and Objectives

This course has two main objectives:

  1. To acquaint you with the major issues and seminal literature in natural resource economics. We will cover issues related to the use of renewable resources such as fisheries, aquifers, and timber, and non-renewable resources such as oil and minerals. We will also cover issues related to the conservation of biodiversity and provision of ecosystem services, climate change, and sustainability. We will analyze the issue of efficient use of resources over time and under what conditions market equilibrium achieves an efficient outcome, intergenerational equity and discounting, common property resources, imperfect competition, spatial modeling, uncertainty, and irreversible decisions. We will also consider new research on global integrated assessment modeling and creation of earth-economy models.

  2. To increase your ability to do economic research. We will do a set of activities to increase your ability to think critically and formulate specific researchable questions, as well as improving your modeling and analytical skills.

Prerequisites

APEC 8000-8004 or equivalent (graduate level microeconomic theory). It is possible to take microeconomic theory concurrently. If you haven’t had such classes (or are taking them concurrently) please talk to me about what you will need to do to keep up. We will adjust the course based on how familiar students are with the techniques of dynamic optimization (optimal control theory and dynamic programming).