Prof. Charles D. Kolstad HSSB 1231

Office: 3036 North Hall TuTh 9:30--10:45

Office Hours: Tues 3:30-5:30; Wed 3:00-4:00; or by appt.

Phone: 893 2108; email: kolstad@econ.ucsb.edu

This is a basic course in environmental policy, with a bit of an economics perspective. Economics concerns tradeoffs and deciding how to use scarce resources. If there is one thing we can probably all agree on it is that environmental quality is scarce and getting scarcer, at least in this part of the world. A companion course, EnvSt 175 (Econ 115), is a much more advanced economics course with less policy content.

There are no prerequisites for this course. That does not mean that the course will be easy. The material is rigorous and analytical. The book we are using is intended primarily for a semester course (15 weeks) and we will be covering it in ten weeks. The book is Barry Field: Environmental Economics, An Introduction (McGraw-Hill, 1997). It is available from the UCEN bookstore.

There are several requirements for the course, including a paper, a mid-term (Nov. 3) and a final (Tuesday, Dec. 8, 8-11 am). There will be weekly short (5 minute) quizzes, covering the material (class lectures and readings) of the previous week. The relative weights in your final grade are:

quizzes, 15%; midterm, 20%; final, 30%; paper, 20%; class participation, 15%

The paper is due on the last day of class (Dec 3). A one page (max) overview is due Oct 29; an outline with preliminary set of references is due Nov. 17. The paper should be an economic critique of the current regulatory approach to a specific environmental problem (see Ch 14-17 of Field for good overviews). Find an environmental problem you are interested in, figure out how it is currently regulated, figure out what is wrong with the current regulatory approach, and recommend changes that would improve things. Support your arguments in all cases. The paper should be 2000-3500 words (use the word count on your word processor). The paper should be typed and double-spaced. It is particularly important that your paper be well-written. You will be graded down for poor grammar, misspelling and loose logic in your paper. So after you write your paper and print it out, read it again, mark it up and produce a revised version. References at the back of the paper should be to documents that you mention in the text. References are not the same as a bibliography.

The term will be in two parts. The first part (prior to the midterm) develops the tools to examine the environment through the lens of economics. The second half of the course concerns regulation of the environment and outstanding policy problems. An outline of the course follows.

Week 1: Introduction (Field, Chaps 1&2)

Weeks 2 & 3: Analytic Tools (Field, Chaps 3-5)

Weeks 4 & 5: Environmental Analysis (Field, Chaps 6-8)

Weeks 6 - 8: Environmental Policy Analysis (Field, Chaps 9-13)

Weeks 9 & 10: Environmental Policy