Duration: 3 hours per week - 13 weeks [ECTS: 6]

Course outline

1. Economics and the environment: The economy-environment linkage. Necessary terminology (energy, ecology, environmental pollution, characteristics of the various pollutants)
2. Environment and Development: Concepts of Sustainability. Environmental Kuznets Curve hypothesis.
3. Welfare Economics and the Environment (public and private goods, common property goods. The tragedy of the commons. The basic economic problems. Welfare criteria. Analysis of Partial and General Equilibrium).
4. Market failure and the government: Public goods, externalities, monopolies and imperfect information.
Solutions to market failures. Determination of the optimal pollution level.
5. Achieving optimal environmental protection: Pigouvian taxes; property rights and Coase theorem.
6. The Economics of Environmental Regulation: Economy wide effects of regulation, environmental regulation under uncertainty, markets for pollution control, tradable permits, non-point source pollution, monitoring and enforcement. Choice and comparison of policy instruments. Uncertainty and the choice of policy instruments: Price or quantity controls?
7. Environmental Management Systems: EMAS / ISO 14001 and their applications in Greece and in
Europe.
8. Valuing the environment: CBA, cost-effectiveness, hedonic pricing, travel cost, contingent valuation.
Methods of damage evaluation.
9. International environmental problems: The dimensions and solutions of the problems (acid rain, global warming, ozone depletion, biodiversity, desertification, etc.).
10. Discounting the future: Time in economic analysis