wir911 - Advanced Topics of Sustainability Economics

Department of Business Administration, Economics and Law (Economics)

6 KP

Module components

Semester courses Sommersemester 2019

Examination

Lecture

Exercises

Seminar

2.02.823 - Inequality and Environmental Policy
- Dr. rer. pol. Philipp Poppitz
- Jasper Meya
Monday: 12:00 - 16:00, weekly (from 01/04/19), Location: V04 1-146
Dates on Friday, 19.07.2019 - Saturday, 20.07.2019 10:00 - 18:00, Location: A05 1-159
Motivation and background: The distributive effects (‘incidence’) of environmental policies are becoming increasingly important for the political feasibility of environmental policies addressing e.g. climate change or biodiversity loss. The protest of the yellow vests that stopped Macrons petrol tax due to the expected distributional consequences are a prominent example. Also in Germany the incidence of environmental policies such as the coal exit, a pesticide tax or a land value tax is of high concern in public debates. The need for stringent environmental policies comes at a time where many countries of the world have become becoming increasingly unequal in the distribution of income and wealth. In Germany for example, the Gini index of disposable income increased from 0.25 in the 1980s to 0.293 in 2015. Therefore, the acceptance and political feasibility of environmental policies depends not only on their aggregate costs, but also on their distributional effects. On the global stage the trends are slightly different, but the challenge remains the same. Global income inequality has fallen over the last decades but the impact of fundamental global environmental changes caused by human action will have increasingly strong distributional effects not only within but also between countries. Therefore, also the (economic) resources for adaptation and mitigation strategies against climate change must be distributed within and between countries. While economics as a discipline has focused mainly on efficiency in the past, policy makers are frequently more concerned with distributive effects and justice. In this course, we aim at learning and extending state-of-the-art environmental economics methods to analyse, understand and manage the distributional implications of environmental policies and enable students to apply these to real world cases. Aims and scope: In this course, we will study the multifaceted relationships between inequality and environmental policy. The course starts with a series of lectures on inequality, distribute justice and environmental policy instruments. Thereby students will be encouraged and supported to stepwise develop their own project. This could be for instance an analysis of the distributive effects of the diesel car ban in German cities, pesticide taxes, the German coal exit or energy turn, house prices in urban centres or biodiversity loss. Further topics include the distribution of risks related to climate change, macroeconomic consequences of environmental policies or multilateral action against climate change in an unequal world. Students will present sketches for their projects early on. In the following seminar weeks student have time to work on their project under the support by the lectures. Finally, in a two days block course students will present their project in a scientific conference style and mutually review their papers. Format: • Sessions 1 to 4: lectures, with interactive parts to facilitate the development of own project ideas, reading and discussing case studies in groups • Session 5: Sketches of research projects by students • Sessions 6 to 12: work on individual projects • Block seminar: 19.07. and 20.07. from 10 to 18: presentation and discussion of student projects in a scientific conference style including a chair, presenters and discussants.

Hinweise zum Modul

Prerequisites	none
Prüfungszeiten	end of semester
Module examination	written exam
Skills to be acquired in this module	This course aims at giving students an understanding of reasons, goals and instruments for climate policy, as well as implied complications due to the long term characteristics and the international dimension of climate change. Students first learn basics about the natural science of climate change and the main statements of climate research about the anthropogenic contribution to climate change. The economic interpretation of high pollution as a symptom of a market failure then leads to the treatment of policy instruments, and the understanding of economic efficiency as a prerequisite for effective climate policy. Game theoretic analysis of international negotiations and agreements provides key insights about the international dimension of the problem. By means of practical examples students then see in detail the functionality and pitfalls of selected implemented (or currently discussed) policies, e.g. the EU-ETS.With successful completion of the course, students shall be able to judge climate policy issues on an informed scientific basis (natural science and economics).

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