Empirical Environmental Economics

This course has two broad objectives. The first is to familiarize students with important empirical findings and lines of inquiry at the frontier of energy and environmental economics. The second is to develop an understanding of empirical methods and research designs commonly used in the field of energy and environmental economics. To reach the first goal, there will be an in-depth treatment of some core concepts in environmental economics in the first part of the course, such as externalities, valuation of the environment and the challenge of designing good policy instruments. We will talk about the economic rationale for a broad range of possible policies: environmental taxes, emissions trading systems, tax breaks and subsidies and performance standards. The second part of the course will focus on discussing and synthesizing the conclusions of a number of seminal papers on the effects of various energy, environmental and climate policies on environmental, economic and social outcomes. A key element of this discussion will be the critical analysis of the empirical strategies (e.g. difference-in-differences, synthetic control, regression discontinuity) in the papers discussed.