Climate Change Economics and Policy

The course aims to offer an introductory, albeit comprehensive, picture of the main environmental, economic, social and economic policy (either mitigation or adaptation) issues related to climate change. The course will also discuss the challenges that climate change and its impacts pose to the economic assessment and the methodologies economics uses for their evaluation. The course will finally present the start and evolution of international negotiation process on climate change.

At the end of the course students will be acquainted with the concept of climate change as an "economic" and development issue. They will be familiar with the challenges to implementation, cost-benefit-effectiveness evaluation, pros and cons of different strategies against climate change. They will be also updated on the exit of major international climate change agreements.
Applying this knowledge, students will be able to: autonomously judge the appropriateness of mitigation and adaptation policies proposed domestically and internationally, with respect to the achievement of temperature increase stabilization targets; critically follow the evolution of UN climate change negotiation process; orient themselves and scrutiny the vast social economic literature on climate change periodically surveyed by the IPCC.