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Instructors
Stefan Ambec
Office: MS 113
E-mail: stefan.ambec@tse-fr.eu
Ingela Alger
Office: MS 202
E-mail: ingela.alger@tse-fr.eu
Course Objective
The course contains advanced theory in environmental and natural resource economics. It
focuses on some of the mechanisms whereby human beings allocate and share natural
resources. The two main topics are: fair allocation of natural resources and evolution of cooperation
in social dilemmas. The first topic examines how to allocate fairly scarce natural
resources among users. It relies on an axiomatic approach: fairness is defined as general
principles. From those principles, we derive a fair way to share natural resource. We then
discuss its implementation by regulation, markets, and negotiation rules among users. The
second topic casts sharing and management of natural resources as a social dilemma, and
examines theoretical, experimental, and empirical literature on behavior in social dilemmas. It
discusses the potential for evolutionary forces and institutional mechanisms to help achieve
efficient outcomes. The main goals of the course are to enhance the ability of the student to
understand the literature and to conduct research in the field.
Schedule
Thursday 14h00 - 17h00 MD 104
Evaluation
Each student will make a presentation in class. The presentation will introduce and discuss a
paper in the literature. Paper suggestions will be provided by the instructors.
Each student will then write a short paper related to the paper he or she presented in class.
The short paper should include (i) a review of some papers on the same topic/model, (ii)
some analytical work (an extension of the model, dropping one assumption, examining other
axiomatic principles, adding more structure to the model, comparing formally models, etc.).
The evaluation will be based on the presentation (1/3) and the short paper (2/3).
Announcements
The first lecture of the class will take place on Thursday, 12th of January 2012.
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