Recommended Readings

I strongly recommend the purchase of these books:

Kolstad, Charles D. Environmental Economics. 1st ed. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2000. ISBN: 0195119541.

Stavins, Robert N., ed. Economics of the Environment: Selected Readings. 4th ed. New York, NY: W. W. Norton, 2000. ISBN: 0393975231. (EESR)

The syllabus is intended to serve as a guide to the literature and it is not expected that you will read every article. The chapters from the Kolstad textbook are required, and I will highlight the required articles from each section during lecture. Two less advanced textbooks that may be useful for gaining intuition are:

Tietenberg, Thomas H. Environmental and Natural Resource Economics. 5th ed. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 2000. ISBN: 0321031288.

Chapman, Duane. Environmental Economics: Theory, Application, and Policy. New York, NY: Longman Press, 2000. ISBN: 0321014359.

Finally, students that are interested in the current state of U.S. environmental policies are directed to: Portney, Paul, and Robert N. Stavins, eds. Public Policies for Environmental Protection. 2nd ed. Washington, DC: Resources for the Future, 2000. ISBN: 1891853031.

Readings by Weekly Sessions

Readings Table

WEEK #	TOPICS	READINGS
1	Introduction: The Role of Government	Kolstad. Chapters 1, and 2. Oates, Wallace E., ed. "Introduction: An Economic Perspective on Environmental and Resource Management." In The RFF Reader in Environmental and Resource Management. Washington, DC: Resources for the Future, 1999. ISBN: 0915707969. Cropper, Maureen L., and Wallace E. Oates. "Environmental Economics: A Survey." Journal of Economic Literature 30 (1992): 675-740. (Chapter 4 in EESR) Ruff, Larry. "Economic Common Sense of Pollution." The Public Interest 19 (1970): 69-85. Portney, Paul R., and Robert N. Stavins, eds. "Introduction." Chapter 1 in Public Policies for Environmental Protection. 2nd ed. Washington, DC: Resources for the Future, 2000. ISBN: 1891853031. ———. "EPA and the Evolution of Federal Regulation." Chapter 2 in Public Policies for Environmental Protection. 2nd ed. Washington, DC: Resources for the Future, 2000. ISBN: 1891853031.
2	Economic Efficiency and Benefit-Cost Analysis	Kolstad. Chapters 3, and 4. Arrow, Kenneth, et al. "Is there a Role for Benefit-Cost Analysis in Environmental Health, and Safety Regulation?" Science, April 12, 1996. (Chapter 13 in EESR) Brennan, Timothy. "Discounting the Future: Economics and Ethics." In The RFF Reader in Environmental and Resource Management. Edited by Oates. Washington, DC: Resources for the Future, 1999. ISBN: 0915707969. Farrow, Scott, and Michael Toman. "Using Benefit-Cost Analysis to Improve Environmental Regulation." Environment, March 1999, 12-15 and 33-37. Kelman, Steven. "Cost-Benefit Analysis: An Ethical Critique." AEI Journal on Government and Society Regulation (March 1981): 33-40. (Chapter 15 in EESR; also read the replies in EESR) Solow, Robert M. "Sustainability: An Economist's Perspective." Lecture to the Marine Policy Center, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, MA, (June 14): 1991. (Chapter 5 in EESR) Viscusi, W. Kip "Regulating the Regulators." University of Chicago Law Review 63 (1996): 1423-61. (Chapter 14 in EESR). "What Price Posterity." Economist, March 23, 1991. "Creating Incentives." Economist, May 29, 1993.
3	Public Goods and Externalities	Kolstad. Chapters 5, and 6. Coase, Ronald H. "The Problem of Social Cost." The Journal of Law and Economics 3 (October 1960): 1-44. (Chapter 3 in EESR).
4	The Optimal Regulation of Pollution: Choice of Policy Instruments	Kolstad. Chapters 7, 8, 9, 10, and 11. Barthold, Thomas A. "Issues in the Design of Environmental Excise Taxes." Journal of Economic Perspectives 8, no. 1 (Winter 1994): 133-51. Cohen, Mark A. "Monitoring and Enforcement of Environmental Policy." Mimeograph, Vanderbilt University, 1998. Fullerton, Don, and Thomas C. Kinnaman. "Household Response to Pricing Garbage by the Bag." American Economic Review 86, no. 4 (September 1996): 971-84. Fullerton, Don, and Sarah West. "Tax and Subsidy Combinations for the Control of Car Pollution." NBER Working Paper #7774. Sandel, Michael J. "It's Immoral to Buy the Right to Pollute." New York Times, December 15, 1997, p. A29. (Chapter 19 in EESR; also read replies in EESR). Tietenberg, Thomas H. "Economic Instruments for Environmental Regulation." Oxford Review of Economic Policy 6, no. 1 (March 1990): 17-33. (Chapter 16 in EESR). Wiener, Jonathan. "Global Trade in Greenhouse Gas Control: Market Merits and Critics' Concerns." In The RFF Reader in Environmental and Resource Management. Edited by Oates. Washington, DC: Resources for the Future, 1999. ISBN: 0915707969. "Clean and Green, or Lean and Mean?" Economist, June 28, 1997. "Taxes for a Greener Environment." Economist, June 28, 1997.
5	The Optimal Regulation of Pollution: The Sulfur Dioxide Experiments	Schmalensee, et. al. "An Interim Evaluation of Sulfur Dioxide Emissions Trading." Journal of Economics Perspectives 12, no. 3 (Summer 1998): 53-68. (Chapter 20 in EESR). Stavins, Robert N. "What Can We Learn from the Grand Policy Experiment? Lessons from SO2 Allowance Trading." Journal of Economics Perspectives 12, no. 3 (Summer 1998): 69-88. (Chapter 21 in EESR).
6	Risk, Uncertainty, and Liability	Kolstad. Chapter 12. Freeman, A. Myrick, and Paul R. Portney. "Economics Clarifies Choices about Managing Risk." In The RFF Reader in Environmental and Resource Management. Edited by Oates. Washington, DC: Resources for the Future, 1999. ISBN: 0915707969.
7	International and Interregional Competition: Is there a Race to the Bottom? Is there an Income Effect?	Kolstad. Parts of Chapter 13. Oates, Wallace E., and Robert M. Schwab. "Economic Competition Among Jurisdictions: Efficiency Enhancing or Distortion Inducing?" Journal of Public Economics 35, no. 3 (April 1988): 333-354. Do Environmental Regulations Retard Local Economic Activity? Greenstone, Michael. "The Impacts of Environmental Regulations on Industrial Activity: Evidence from the 1970 and 1977 Clean Air Act Amendments and the Census of Manufactures." Journal of Political Economy 110 (2002): 1175-1219. Henderson, J. Vernon. "Effects of Air Quality Regulation." American Economic Review 86 (1996): 789-813. Environmental Kuznets Curves Grossman, Gene, and Alan Krueger. "Economic Growth and the Environment." Quarterly Journal of Economics 110, no. 2 (1995): 353-377. Levinson, Arik. "The Ups and Downs of the Environmental Kuznets Curve." In Recent Advances in Environmental Economics. Edited by John List and Aart de Zeeuw. Northhampton, MA: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2002. ISBN: 1843760029. "Dirt Poor." Economist, March 21, 1998. Does Trade Harm the Environment? Bhagwati, Jagdish, and Herman Daly. "Debate: Does Free Trade Harm the Environment?" Scientific American, (November 1993): 41-57. Sanger, David E. "Trade Group Orders U.S. to Alter Law for First Time." New York Times, January 18, 1996.
8	The Costs of Environmental Regulations	Kolstad. Chapter 14. Productivity Growth/Porter Hypothesis Jorgenson, Dale W., and Peter J. Wilcoxen. "Environmental Regulation and U.S. Economic Growth." Rand Journal of Economics 21 (1990): 314-40. Portney, Paul R., and David Gardiner. "Does Environmental Policy Conflict with Economic Growth." In The RFF Reader in Environmental and Resource Management. Edited by Oates. Washington, DC: Resources for the Future, 1999. ISBN: 0915707969. Porter, Michael E., and Class Van der Linde. "Toward a New Conception of the Environment-Competitiveness Relationship." Journal of Economic Perspectives 9, no. 4 (Fall 1995): 97-118. Palmer, Karen, Wallace E. Oates, and Paul R. Portney. "Tightening Environmental Standards: The Benefit-Cost or the No-Cost Paradigm?" Journal of Economic Perspectives 9, no. 4 (Fall 1995): 119-32. Green National Accounting "An Invaluable Environment." Economist, April 18, 1998. Hecht, Joy. "Environmental Accounting: Where we are now, Where we are heading." Resources 135 (Spring 1999): 14-17. (published by Resource for the Future) The Double Dividend Hypothesis Goulder, Lawrence H. "Environmental Policy Making in a Second-Best Setting." Journal of Applied Economics 1, no. 2 (1998). (Chapter 17 in EESR) Morgenstern, Richard D. "Environmental Taxes: Is There a Double Dividend?" Environment 38, no. 3 (April 1996): 16-20, 32-4. Passell, Peter. "When the Benefits are Mostly Modest, What Price Clean Air?" New York Times, April 3, 1997.
9	The Measurement of Benefits: Hedonic Price Indices	Kolstad. Chapter 15. Braden, John B., Charles D. Kolstad, and David Miltz. "Introduction." Chapter 1 in Measuring the Demand for Environmental Quality. Edited by John B. Braden and Charles D. Kolstad. Amsterdam, NL: Elsevier, 1998, pp. 3-16. ISBN: 0444888772. Smith, V. Kerry. "Nonmarket Valuation of Environmental Resources: An Interpretive Appraisal." Land Economics 69, no. 1 (February 1993): 1-26. (Chapter 9 in EESR) "Treasuring the Environment." Economist, March 3, 1990. "A Price on the Priceless?" Economist, August 17, 1991. Hedonic Price Indices Kolstad. Chapter 16. Ashenfelter, Orley, and Michael Greenstone. "Using Mandated Speed Limits to Measure the Value of a Statistical Life: Evidence from the Introduction of the 65-mph Speed Limit on Rural Interstates." National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper #9094, 2001. Chay, Kenneth, and Michael Greenstone. "Does Air Quality Matter? Evidence from the Housing Market." Mimeograph, University of Chicago, 2003. Freeman III., A Myrick. "Property Value Models." Chapter 11 in The Measurement of Environmental and Resource Values. Washington, DC: Resources for the Future, 1993, pp. 367-420. ISBN: 0915707691. van Houtven, George L., and Maureen Cropper. "When is a Life Too Costly to Save? The Evidence from Environmental Regulations." Chapter 7 in The RFF Reader in Environmental and Resource Management. Edited by Oates. Washington, DC: Resources for the Future, 1999. ISBN: 0915707969. Viscusi, W. Kip. "The Value of Risks to Life and Health." Journal of Economic Literature 31 (1993): 1912-1946.
10	The Measurement of Benefits: Household Production	Kolstad. Chapter 17. Dickie, Mark, and Shelby Gerking. "Willingness to Pay for Ozone Control: Inferences from the Demand for Medical Care." Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 21, no. 1 (July 1991): 1-16. Johanneson, Magnus, Per-Olov Johansson, Bengt Kristom, and Tore Soderqvist. "Valuing Changes in Health: Theoretical and Empirical Issues." In Current Issues in Environmental Economics. Edited by Johansson, et. al. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1995, pp. 79-97. ISBN: 0719038456. Smith, V. Kerry. "Household Production Functions and Environmental Benefit Estimation." Chapter 3 in Measuring the Demand for Environmental Quality. Edited by John B. Braden, and Charles D. Kolstad. Amsterdam, NL: Elsevier, 1991, pp. 41-76. ISBN: 0444888772.
11	The Measurement of Benefits: Contingent Valuation	Kolstad. Chapter 18. Portney, Paul R. "The Contingent Valuation Debate: Why Economists Should Care." Journal of Economic Perspectives 8, no. 4 (Fall 1994): 3-17. (Chapter 10 in EESR) Hanemann, Michael W. "Valuing the Environment Through Contingent Valuation." Journal of Economic Perspectives 8, no. 4 (Fall 1994): 19-43. (Chapter 11 in EESR) Diamond, Peter A., and Jerry A. Hausman. "Contingent Valuation: Is Some Number Better than No Number?" Journal of Economic Perspectives 8, no. 4 (Fall 1994): 45-64. (Chapter 12 in EESR) "The Price of Imagining Arden." Economist, December 3, 1994.
12	Policy Application: Do the Benefits of the Regulation of Airborne Particulate Matter Exceed the Costs?	Arrow, Kenneth, et. al. "Brief Amici Curiae" to the U.S. Supreme Court. AEI-Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies, Washington, DC, July 2000. Chay, Kenneth, Carlos Dobkin, and Michael Greenstone. "The Clean Air Act of 1970 and Adult Mortality." Journal of Risk and Uncertainty 27, no. 3 (2003): 279-300. (With Kenneth Chay and Carlos Dobkin) Chay, Kenneth, and Michael Greenstone. "The Impact of Air Pollution on Infant Mortality: Evidence from Geographic Variation in Pollution Shocks Induced by a Recession." Quarterly Journal of Economics 118, no. 3 (2003): 1121-1167. Chay, Kenneth, and Michael Greenstone. "Air Quality, Infant Mortality, and the Clean Air Act of 1970." NBER Working Paper #10053, 2003. Dockery, Douglas W., et. al. "An Association Between Air Pollution and Mortality in Six U.S. Cities." The New England Journal of Medicine 328, no. 24 (1993): 1753-9. Lippmann, Morton, Kazuhiko Ito, Arthur Nádas, and Richard T Burnett. "Association of Particulate Matter Components with Daily Mortality and Morbidity in Urban Populations." Report #95, Health Effects Institute. 2000, pp. 1-38 only.
13	Policy Application: What are the Costs of Global Warming in the US?	Mendelsohn, Robert, William D. Nordhaus, and Daigee Shaw. "The Impact of Global Warming on Agriculture: A Ricardian Approach." American Economic Review 84, (1994): 753-771. Deschenes, Olivier, and Michael Greenstone. "The Economic Impacts of Climate Change: Evidence from Agricultural Output and Random Fluctuations in Weather." 2004.
14	Review