CLIMATE CHANGE ECONOMICS

This course provides a compendium of the economists’ views on climate change. The system will apply economic and econometric principles to analyze climate change problems. Besides using advanced microeconomics concepts in the study of climate policies as in a standard environmental economics course, the course will introduce the essential toolkit of climate modeling and the main econometric issues to estimate climate change impacts on socioeconomic variables. Finally, the international dimension of climate change policies will be analyzed using game theory and in-class games. Active students’ participation is required through group presentations and collective discussions around the primary debates on climate policies.

At the end of the course, students will get a comprehensive knowledge of the leading climate change issues and their policy solutions; will be familiar with the pros and cons of different policy instruments; will familiarize themselves with the main econometric and modeling techniques used in climate change economics; will be up to date with the international climate change negotiation process, political drivers of climate policies and their acceptability. This knowledge will enable students to interpret critically the results of the rapidly expanding body of economic literature assessing the effect of climate change impacts and policies, will develop students’ capacity to think in a multi-disciplinary way connecting political, scientific, and economic processes on climate change issues; should contribute to form the students' skills to conduct independent research in these areas.

Students are expected to be familiar with undergraduate-level notions of calculus, statistics, and basic notions of microeconomics and macroeconomics.

My slides No one book, several sources in the reading folder. Any microeconomics manual for the basic concepts Any book on environmental and resource economics There are no ideal books, some suggestions are: Pearce, Tuner and Bateman, Environmental Economics (old and so-so) Baumol and Oates, The Theory of Environmental Policy (old but excellent) Perman et al., Natural Resource and Environmental Economics During the lectures selected articles will be indicated.

Frontal lessons Active participation is highly recommended.

The grading is based on: an written exam (50% of grade); the drafting of an essay to be prepared as a group work and to be presented as a seminar during the lectures (30% of grade). This will be on the first part. participation to the applied activities (20%). The topics for the essay will be assigned by the teacher. Groups will be composed by 3 to 4 students. In-class presence is essential during the presentation by the entire group.