You may recognize this picture as being from Vancouver, Canada -- arguably one of the most beautiful and livable major cities in the world today. One of the things that makes Vancouver great is the intricate balance that has been achieved between the spectacular natural and human-built environment. While it would be nice to say that this balance was achieved through careful policy design and implementation, in reality Vancouver's current anatomy owes as much to happenstance and philanthropy as it does to making hard decisions concerning the tradeoffs between man's welfare and the integrity of natural systems. As a result, there is a constant tension in the city between man and nature, economics and ecosystems. In some case this tension is inherent, in others it arises from consequences of poor policy and decision making.
In this course we will explore the analytic role of economics when humans are confronted with decisions concerning their use of natural and environmental resources, particularly when these resources are used in the production process. In doing so, we will use basic microeconomic principles to understand how and why private and public decision making might be improved. Examples of topical resource issues (fisheries management, forest harvesting, pollution control) will be used to motivate our study. Although no semester course can cover all the relevant topics, we hope that by semester's end you will be able to understand and analyze the tradeoffs associated with a number of current natural resource issues.
This website will be used to both distribute and archive all of the information that you will be learning this semester. Use the navigation bar at the top of this page to move to the section that you are interested in. If you feel that something is missing or not working properly, just drop an email to Richard Kazmierczak and I will try to address your concern. In the meantime, explore the site and get ready for what I hope will be an interesting semester!