FREC 424: Resource Economics -- Course Syllabus, Spring, 2009
Tuesdays and Thursdays, 9:30--10:45 AM, Mitchell Hall room 001

Instructor: John Mackenzie
office: Townsend 215
e-mail: johnmack@udel.edu
office phone: 302-8310-1312 		dept. phone: 302-831-2511
fax: 302-831-6243
cell: 302-373-3723
office hours: Wednesdays 2-3 PM or by appointment
Assignments:
  1. Intro problem set
  2. Indexes, Welfare Measures & Market Distortions
  3. Demographics, Resources & Development
  4. Discounting and Public Goods
  5. Resource Depletion Models
  6. Resource Depletion: Model Variations
  7. Forest Rotation Management
  8. Open-Access FisheryModel
  9. Allocation of Water
Practice Exercises and Power Tools
  1. Regression Models and Exercises
  2. Discounting
  3. Futures
  4. Game Theory
  5. Calculus Review
  6. Constrained Optimization
  7. Linear Programming
The US National Debt Clock
Recommended text: Tietenberg, Tom. Environmental & Natural Resource Economics. (New York: Addison-Wesley)
not required; if you want background reading buy any recent edition (used) online.

Grading: Homework assignments total 60 points plus 2 hour exams @ 20 points each = 100 points.

FIRST HOUR EXAM         SECOND HOUR EXAM

Course Objectives:  At the end of this course you should understand how competitive market processes generally yield efficient allocations of resources through time and between alternative uses; how various market failures arise and affect allocative efficiency; how sound economic policies can correct these failures, and how bad policies can worsen them.

Class Policies: Some assignments require use of Microsoft Excel.  No late work will be accepted. Assignments must be computer-printed or typed.  You are assumed to know the University's policies on academic honesty, (explained in a leaflet available from the Office of the Dean of Students); these will be strictly enforced.

Lecture Notes (in rough order):
  1. Intro
  2. Resource rents
  3. Efficiency
  4. Sustainability
  5. Malthus & co.
  6. Economic surpluses & market distortions
  7. Property rights & externalities
  8. More market failures
  9. Benefit-cost analysis
  10. Innumeracy
  11. Two-period resource depletion model
  12. Reserves
  13. Multi-period resource depletion models
  14. Energy factoids
  1. More on exhaustible resources
  2. Guns, Germs & Steel
  3. Energy markets and policies
  4. Hour Exam
  5. Price uncertainty and derivatives
  6. Hunger and malnutrition
  7. Logistic growth models
  8. Forestry economics and policies
  9. Fisheries economics and policies
  10. Valuation of non-market environmental resources
  11. Economic principles of environmenetal protection
  12. Hour Exam