--- title: Environmental Economics description: Environmental economics studies the financial impact of environmental policies and resource allocation. Learners will understand how to analyze externalities, value natural resources, and evaluate market-based solutions like carbon pricing and pollution regulations. category: finance-economics subcategory: economics-(social-lens) difficulty: beginner, intermediate, advanced url: /subject/environmental-economics --- # Environmental Economics Environmental economics studies the financial impact of environmental policies and resource allocation. Learners will understand how to analyze externalities, value natural resources, and evaluate market-based solutions like carbon pricing and pollution regulations. ## Available Resources 3 Books • 2 Courses • 5 Websites • 3 Papers ## Courses ### 1. Agriculture, Economics and Nature **Author:** David Pannell University of Western Australia course on the economics of farming and its environmental effects: supply and prices, input decisions and production functions, land conservation, cost-benefit analysis of agri-environmental projects, and farm policy. Learners can evaluate farm and policy decisions with basic economic models. **Difficulty:** Beginner | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://www.coursera.org/learn/agriculture-economics-nature **Tags:** agricultural-economics, cost-benefit-analysis, agri-environmental-policy, natural-resource-economics, farm-management ### 2. Environmental Economics **Author:** Michael Moore University of Michigan course on market failures, externalities, and valuing environmental goods, covering pollution regulation, discounting, the social cost of carbon, and benefit-cost analysis. Graduates can appraise climate and energy policy using economic evidence. **Difficulty:** Beginner | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://www.coursera.org/learn/environmental-economics **Tags:** environmental-economics, externalities, benefit-cost-analysis, social-cost-of-carbon, climate-policy ## Websites ### 1. EPA Economics Page The EPA's hub for regulatory economic analysis: guidelines for cost-benefit studies, mortality risk valuation, CGE models, and National Center for Environmental Economics working papers. Shows how US agencies actually price environmental damages and benefits. **Difficulty:** Beginner | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://www.epa.gov/environmental-economics **Tags:** environmental-economics, cost-benefit-analysis, regulation, non-market-valuation, epa ### 2. World Bank Environmental Economics World Bank research, country reports, and datasets on pollution costs, natural capital accounting, carbon pricing, and green growth. Useful for seeing how environmental economics is applied to development policy in low- and middle-income countries. **Difficulty:** Beginner | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/environmental-economics **Tags:** environmental-economics, development-economics, natural-capital, carbon-pricing, world-bank ### 3. doughnuteconomics.org Official site for Doughnut Economics, explaining the donut model that blends social foundations with planetary boundaries. It offers explanations, visual diagrams, case studies, articles, and teaching resources to help researchers, educators, and policymakers understand and apply the concept. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://doughnuteconomics.org **Tags:** websites, humanities-social-sciences, economics ### 4. rff.org Resources for the Future (RFF) is a leading think tank focused on environmental and resource economics. The site hosts rigorous research on climate, energy, water, and natural resources, along with policy briefs, working papers, data tools, events, and expert analysis. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://rff.org **Tags:** websites, humanities-social-sciences, economics ### 5. eaere.org EAERE.org is the official site of the European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, a professional hub for environmental and resource economics research. It provides information on membership, events (including the annual conference), publications, and research resources for the field. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://eaere.org **Tags:** websites, humanities-social-sciences, economics ## Podcasts ### 1. This Week in Carbon **Author:** Edward Smith Weekly interview podcast hosted by Edward Smith on carbon markets, covering compliance and voluntary market news, carbon removal purchasing, project finance and regional policy developments, helping listeners follow how carbon pricing and regulation evolve in practice. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** en | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://thisweekincarbon.com **Tags:** carbon-markets, carbon-pricing, climate-policy, carbon-removal, emissions-trading ### 2. Outrage + Optimism: The Climate Podcast **Author:** Christiana Figueres, Tom Rivett-Carnac, Paul Dickinson Weekly podcast hosted by former UN climate chief Christiana Figueres, Tom Rivett-Carnac and Paul Dickinson. It analyses climate news, international negotiations and corporate climate commitments through interviews with decision makers, helping listeners understand how climate diplomacy and advocacy actually work. **Difficulty:** Beginner | **Language:** en | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://shows.acast.com/outrage-optimism **Tags:** climate-diplomacy, climate-policy, international-negotiations, climate-action ## Books ### 1. Governing the Commons **Author:** Elinor Ostrom Ostrom's study of irrigation systems, fisheries, forests, and pastures managed collectively without privatisation or state control. It sets out eight design principles for durable common-pool resource institutions, giving you a framework for analysing shared-resource governance beyond the tragedy-of-the-commons model. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid **Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/1107569788?tag=edmonddante07-20 **Tags:** books, humanities-social-sciences, international-relations ### 2. Doughnut Economics **Author:** Kate Raworth Critique of growth-centred mainstream economics that proposes the doughnut model, an economy meeting everyone's social needs within planetary boundaries. Across seven principles it covers systems thinking, distributive and regenerative design and human behaviour, giving readers a framework for judging economic goals. **Difficulty:** Beginner | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid **Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/1603587969?tag=edmonddante07-20 **Tags:** doughnut-economics, planetary-boundaries, ecological-economics, sustainability, post-growth ### 3. Environmental Economics **Author:** Charles D. Kolstad Graduate-level treatment of pollution control, externalities, and regulatory design, assuming intermediate microeconomics. Covers market failure, incentive-based instruments versus standards, and both revealed- and stated-preference methods for valuing environmental quality, with the theory behind each estimate. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid **Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/0195119541?tag=edmonddante07-20 **Tags:** books, humanities-social-sciences, economics ## Papers ### 1. Underpriced and Overused: Fossil Fuel Subsidies Data 2025 Update **Author:** Simon Black, Weronika Celniak, Alberto Garcia Huitron, Ian Parry, Paulina Schulz Antipa, Nate Vernon-Lin IMF working paper estimating global fossil fuel subsidies, splitting explicit price gaps from implicit costs of untaxed pollution and congestion. Comes with a country-by-country dataset, so you can see which fuels and which economies carry the largest gaps. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://www.imf.org/en/publications/wp/issues/2025/12/20/underpriced-and-overused-fossil-fuel-subsidies-data-2025-update-572729 **Tags:** fossil-fuel-subsidies, externalities, carbon-pricing, energy-pricing, fiscal-policy ### 2. Public policies against global warming: a supply side approach **Author:** Hans-Werner Sinn Sinn's paper introducing the green paradox: if resource owners anticipate future carbon policy, they accelerate extraction today, so demand-side measures can raise near-term emissions unless supply-side instruments or a rising carbon tax are used instead. **Difficulty:** Advanced | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://www.hanswernersinn.de/dcs/2008_ITAX15_Public_Policies_Against_Global_Warming.pdf **Tags:** green paradox, Hotelling, terminal horizon ### 3. Global Warming and the Green Paradox: A Review of Adverse Effects of Climate Policies **Author:** Frederick van der Ploeg, Cees Withagen A review distinguishing the weak green paradox, where emissions merely shift forward in time, from the strong version where cumulative damage rises, and identifying the extraction costs, reserve heterogeneity and tax designs that neutralise the effect. **Difficulty:** Advanced | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:e9a1d7df-ebc1-4a04-a80a-dee639303080 **Tags:** green-paradox, carbon-tax, climate-policy, exhaustible-resources, fossil-fuel-extraction --- *This content is part of Dantes.io - Your Treasure Map to Knowledge* *Curated by humans at Dantes.io. Personal study use welcome; republishing this curation requires permission (team@dantes.io).* View this page online: https://dantes.io/subject/environmental-economics