HPL 480 Environmental Policy: Philosophical and Economic Issues
This course introduces students to environmental policy and ethics, with special attention to the importance of economic considerations. Specific issues to be covered may include: the equity-efficiency contrast, different decision-making structures, the role of narratives in policy-making, externalities, public goods, property rights, market-failure, benefit-cost analysis, justice, the choice of categories in quantifying policy problems, the relationship of formal and informal rules, propaganda versus information, and the normative idea of rights. This course is an introduction to the interplay of politics, economics, and ethics as they enter into policy-making in the environmental arena.