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CS92PROD
The Economics of Sustainable Development, Vulnerability, and Resilience

ENVS 310
Fall 2015
Section: 01  
Crosslisting: ECON 212
Certificates: International Relations, Environmental Studies

This course will build on the first principles of economics as applied to sustainable development and decision making under uncertainty. One of the course's major objectives will be to explore how efficiency-based risk analysis can inform assessments of vulnerability and resilience from uncertain sources of external stress in ways that accommodate not only attitudes toward risk but also perspectives about discounting and attitudes toward inequality aversion. Early sessions will present these principles, but two-thirds of the class meetings will be devoted to reviewing the applicability of insights drawn from first principles to published material that focuses on resilience, vulnerability, and development (in circumstances where risk can be quantified and other circumstances where it is impossible to specify likelihood, consequence, or both). Students will complete a small battery of early problem sets that will be designed to illustrate how these principles work in well-specified contexts. Students will be increasingly responsible, as the course progresses, for presenting and evaluating published work on vulnerability and resilience--offering critiques and proposing next steps. Initial readings will be provided by the instructor and collaborators in the College of the Environment, but students will be expected to contribute by bringing relevant readings to the class from sources germane to their individual research projects. Collaboration across these projects will thereby be fostered and encouraged by joint presentations and/or presenter-discussant interchanges.
Credit: 1 Gen Ed Area Dept: SBS ENVS
Course Format: SeminarGrading Mode: Student Option
Level: UGRD Prerequisites: ECON110
Fulfills a Major Requirement for: (CGST-MN)(ECON-MN)(ECON)(ENVS-MN)(ENVS)
Past Enrollment Probability: 90% or above

Last Updated on MAR-28-2024
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