The aim of this course is to introduce students to some basic economic principles and theories
explaining environmental issues and problems today and to explore existing policies at the
national, international, and world level. Students will learn about the concepts such as
externalities, the tragedy of the commons, enforcement as a public good, interventionalist
solutions to the externality problem such as taxes and marketable pollution permits, as well as
non-interventionalist solutions to the externality problem such as the Coasian solution and selfregulation.
Students will also review the debate over the environmental Kuznets curve. Because
experimental evidence complements theoretic insights, field data and simulating models nicely,
we will do a couple of in-class experiments
(http://home.cerge-ei.cz/richmanova/TeachingUPCES.html) and also review some research articles
that draw on the experimental methodology.
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