The course is meant to provide a contextual history of how economists have approached, and sometime modelled “nature” and “the environment” in their work. It emphasizes big shifts in which aspects of nature became of interest in the past century for societies at large and for various species of scientists and economists (end of fossil energy, pollution, biodiversity, global warming, planetary boundaries). We cover the tools and models economists developed to solve issues raised by nature (since it was mostly modeled as a constraint or issue), and how these tools were applied, discussed and challenged in academic, policy and business spheres since World War II.
We cover the history and controversies around models of growth, climate models including IAMs, cost-benefit analysis, contingent valuation, valuing ecosystem services, carbon taxes, cap and trade markets, commons governance, market failures, social cost of carbons, redistributive effects of climate policies, etc. We adress the theoretical, empirical, but also ethical and political controversies surrounding these tools, their efficiency, fairness and political acceptability (for instance the discounting of future generations, or how cost-benefit analysis was used to support or resist international treaties on the regulation of carbon emissions).
The course is open to students with a background in economics, as well as engineering/science students with no background in economics who consider working in environmental sciences, expect to be confronted with economic ideas and models and would like to understand their origins and dissemination better. The course is centered on economists, the models and tools they produced, but brings in both mainstream and heterodox perspectives, and details pushbacks from other sciences, natural, life and social,from legal scholars, and from civil societies.
- Teaching coordinator: Cherrier Béatrice