Course:FRE522
| Environmental Externalities in the Global Economy | |
|---|---|
 | |
| FRE 522 | |
| Section: | |
| Instructor: | Dr. Carol McAusland |
| Email: | carol.mcausland@ubc.ca 604.822.3350 |
| Office: | 337 MacMillan Building |
| Office Hours: | Mon 3-4pm (MCML 347)
or by appointment (Zoom) |
| Class Schedule: | Feb 22 to April 8
F2F Mon&Wed: 1:30-3:00pm |
| Classroom: | TBA |
| Important Course Pages | |
| Syllabus | |
| Lecture Notes | |
| Assignments | |
| Course Discussion | |
Prerequisite
FRE 502 (Food Market Analysis) or by permission of the instructor.
Course Description
This course examines barriers to efficient resource and environmental management arising from the trans-national nature of many resources and pollutants. Special emphasis is given to understanding the context and content of international agreements, and to measurement using econometric methods.
Learning Objectives
By the end of this course, successful students will be able to:
- Predict when a country's environment will be hurt or helped by trade liberalization
- Identify the main barriers to binding commitments on greenhouse gas reductions
- Evaluate the different mechanisms through which environmental regulation hinders or augments export competitiveness
- Assess the role of natural disasters, pollution, and climatic events in driving domestic and international migration
- Critique arguments (and evidence) for and against banning trade in endangered species
Course Format
12 lectures of 1.5 hours, twice a week for 6 weeks.
Course Requirements (Subject to changes)
| Exams and Problem Sets | Date | Percent of Grade |
|---|---|---|
| Annotated Bibliography & Presentation | Presentation Question (due March 1; must be approved by March 8) | 5 percent |
| Annotated Bibliography (due March 31) | 10 percent | |
| Peer Assessment of Presentation | 7 percent | |
| Presentation (April 5 & 7) | 18 percent | |
| Quizzes | Quiz 1: TBD | 28 percent |
| Quiz 2: TBD | 28 percent | |
| Class Participation | Contributions to class discussions. | 4 percent |
Report
Identify a policy-relevant question on a topic that exhibits transjurisdictionality and environmental/resource/health market failures; topics covered in-depth elsewhere in MFRE---for example, transboundary fisheries---are ineligible. Create an annotated bibliography of peer-reviewed studies, primary/secondary data, and government publications that are directly related to your question. Draw on these resources to arrive at an answer to your question; present your evidence and conclusions in a live presentation. Deliverables come in four parts.
- An approximately 100 word statement of your research question.
- A (preliminary) annotated bibliography containing at least 4 peer-reviewed publications. Annotations to include 100-150 word description of the main contribution, merits, and drawbacks of each peer-reviewed article/working paper. (Only need to describe 4 of the peer-reviewed papers).
- A rough-draft of your presentation to be workshopped with (and peer-reviewed by) a randomly chosen subset of your classmates.
- Submit the final version of your presentation slides, present your results to the class, and answer questions.
Quizzes
Students will execute 2 timed quizzes: one during class time, the second during exam season.
Sample Quiz 1 (with answers)https://canvas.ubc.ca/courses/19948/files/4173544/download?wrap=1
Sample Quiz 2 (no answers) https://canvas.ubc.ca/courses/19948/files/4173588/download?wrap=1
Class Participation
Your participation grade depends on your contribution to class discussions. All contributions are appreciated, even questions asking for clarification of previously taught material. The sole aim of assigning a participation grade is to encourage active learning for everyone.
Academic Misconduct
Academic dishonesty and plagiarism are taken very seriously in the MFRE program and can result in a range of punitive measures, which could include failing the program. It is each student’s responsibility to review and understand what constitutes academic dishonesty and plagiarism and how to avoid them.
Academic honesty is essential to the continued functioning of UBC as an institution of higher learning and research. All UBC students are expected to behave as honest and responsible members of an academic community. Breach of those expectations or failure to follow the appropriate policies, principles, rules, and guidelines of the University with respect to academic honesty may result in disciplinary action.
Academic misconduct that is subject to disciplinary measures includes, but is not limited, to the following:
- Plagiarism, which is intellectual theft, occurs where an individual submits or presents the oral or written work of another person as his or her own. In many UBC courses, you will be required to submit material in electronic form. The electronic material will be submitted to a service which UBC subscribes, called TurnItIn. This service checks textual material for originality. It is increasingly used in North American universities. For more information, review TurnItIn website online.
- Cheating, which may include, but is not limited to falsification of any material subject to academic evaluation, unauthorized collaborative work; or use of unauthorized means to complete an examination.
- Submitting others work as your own, may include but not limited to i. using, or attempting to use, another student’s answers; ii. providing answers to other students; iii. failing to take reasonable measures to protect answers from use by other students; or iv. in the case of students who study together, submitting identical or virtually identical assignments for evaluation unless permitted by the course instructor.
- Resubmission of Material, submitting the same, or substantially the same, essay, presentation, or assignment more than once (whether the earlier submission was at this or another institution) unless prior approval has been obtained from the instructor(s) to whom the assignment is to be submitted.
- Use of academic ghostwriting services, including hiring of writing or research services and submitting papers or assignments as his or her own.
Student Responsibility: Students are responsible for informing themselves of the guidelines of acceptable and non-acceptable conduct for examinations and graded assignments as presented via FRE code of conduct guidelines; course syllabus and instructors; and UBC academic misconduct policies, Review the following web sites for details:
- UBC Academic Misconduct and Discipline (http://www.calendar.ubc.ca/Vancouver/index.cfm?tree=3,54,111,0)
- UBC Learning Commons web-based Academic Integrity (http://learningcommons.ubc.ca/academic-integrity/).
Penalties for Academic Dishonesty: The integrity of academic work depends on the honesty of all those who work in this environment and the observance of accepted conventions. Academic misconduct is treated as a serious offence at UBC and within the MFRE program. Penalties for academic dishonesty are applied at the discretion of the course instructor. Incidences of academic misconduct may result in a reduction of grade or a mark of zero on the assignment or examination with more serious consequences being applied if the matter is referred to the Dean’s office and/or President’s Advisory Committee on Student Discipline.
Online Course Material
Available at Canvas. You are required to regularly login to your course page for FRE 522. Your syllabus, course-lecture slides, additional material, announcements, assignments, and grades are available there.
Course Outline and Readings
Question: Does international trade help or hurt the environment?
Partial Equilibrium view (Old Lecture Notes )
Kym Anderson (1992) “The standard welfare economies of policies affecting trade and the environment.” The Greening of World Trade Issues Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Effects of Trade Liberalization on the Environment
General Equilibrium perspective: Scale, Composition, Technique, and Selection Effects (Old Lecture Notes)
Cherniwchan, Copeland and Taylor 2017 "Trade and the environment - new methods, measurements and results" Annual Review of Economics https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/full/10.1146/annurev-economics-063016-103756
Question: Does environmental regulation hurt competitiveness? (Old Lecture Notes )
Broner, Bustos, Carvalho (2012). Sources of Comparative Advantage in Polluting Industries. NBER Working Paper No. 18337. http://www.nber.org/papers/w18337
Question: What happens if we regulate emissions, but our trade partners do not? (Old Lecture notes: leakage , Aichele & Felbermayr papers )
Aichele and Felbermayr (2012). "Kyoto and the Carbon Footprint of Nations" Journal of Environmental Economics and Management https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0095069611001422
Aichele and Felbermayr (2015). Kyoto and Carbon Leakage: An Empirical Analysis of the Carbon Content of Bilateral Trade. The Review of Economics and Statistics. Vol. 97, No. 1, Pages 104-115.http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/REST_a_0043
Question: What kinds of trade/environmental policies can reduce leakage? (Old Lecture notes )
McAusland & Najjar (2015). Carbon Footprint Taxes Environmental and Resource Economics. Volume 61, Issue 1, pp 37–70. http://link.spr inger.com/artic le/10.1007/s10640-013- 9749-5
Bohringer, Carbone & Rutherford. (2018). Embodied Carbon Tariffs. Scandinavian Journal of Economics. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/sjoe.12211
Harstad, Bard. (2012) "Buy Coal: A Case for Supply Side Environmental Policy" Journal of Political Economy https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/665405
Question: Are trade bans effective at protecting endangered species? (Lecture notes)
Hsiang and Sekar (2016). Does Legalization Reduce Black Market Activity? Evidence from a Global Ivory Experiment and Elephant Poaching Data. NBER Working Paper No. 22314. http://www.nber.org/papers/w22314
(If Time Permits) Question: Will people move in response to pollution and climate change? (Lecture notes)
Marchiori, Maystadt and Schumacher (2012). "The impact of weather anamolies on migration in sub-Saharan Africa" Journal of Enivoronmental Economics and Management https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0095069612000150
Bohra-Mishra, Oppenheimer, Hsiang (2014). Nonlinear permanent migration response to climatic variations but minimal response to disasters . PNAS. 9780–9785.