Environmental Economics and Planning
Module 2: Planning
Syllabus:
General Course Objectives:
​1.To apply microeconomic theory to the study of environmental issues.
2.To identify and critically evaluate alternative environmental policy instruments.
3.To measure costs and benefits of non-market goods.
4.To develop written and verbal skills in communicating an environmental economic perspective.
Planning
The focus of the second module is on the methodologies used by researchers and practitioners to evaluate market and non-market goods. Evaluations of non market goods are a fundamental tool for policy makers, to compare the desirability of competing policies and to take informed decision. Recently these methodologies are the base for the measurements related to Natural Capital and Ecosystem services, also promoted and pursued by the program of the United Nations termed Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. Both revealed preference and stated preference methods and applications will be examined.
In particular we learn how to use Discrete choice methods to elicit willingness to pay (wtp) for non-market goods. Preliminary, we introduce the basics of decision theory and get acquainted with multicriteria analysis.
We learn how to design an experiment and how to carry out the pre-test phase of the enquiry.
Finally we learn the econometric techniques employed to estimate parameters and wtp. We show how to estimate multinomial logit and random parameters to obtain implicit prices for each characteristic of the natural good or service.
