ECON30011: Environmental Economics

Presentation (8 minute limit), 15%
Assignment, 25%
2 Hour Multiple Choice Exam, 60% (Hurdle Requirement)

Required a good amount of effort (given it is 25%), but I enjoyed it overall and it wasn't too difficult. Some questions were similar to tutorial stuff and required graphs, calculations ect. Reviewing tutorial solutions helped here. There were also more open-ended type questions, requiring your own interpretations/opinions. Surprisingly the open-ended questions weren't too hard to score well in as long as you gave it your best attempt and linked the lecture concepts.

Overall, I found the content of this subject really fascinating to learn about, and really felt I got something out of taking it. Probably wasn't perfectly organised, but understandable given a new coordinator took over this year, so should only improve from here. It had a fairly small cohort size (around 65) and discussions were highly encouraged in lectures, giving it somewhat of a more intimate feel (if you attended). Ultimately, I'd only recommend this subject if you're actually interested in environmental problems. Don't take it thinking it sounds like an easy elective/breadth because it's definitely not.

Lecture topics were:
-Economic Approach to Environmental Problems (market failures and policy instruments)
-Economics of Pollution Control
-Global Air Pollution (Ozone Layer and Climate Change)
-Electricity Generation Policies
-Energy (Natural gas, oil, nuclear)
-Recyclable Resources
-Transport
-Fisheries
-Land Use, Conservation, and Biodiversity
-Water

Despite being MC, this was NOT an easy exam. 33 questions, each with between 3 to 14 possible answers (usually around 8 or so? but I didn't really pay attention to the "average" number of possible answers in the exam). Some answers could be easily crossed off, but for others it was quite difficult to choose between the remaining few choices, and you really had to know the details of the lecture and tutorials content. Based on my score, I think some scaling occured as I was kind of worried I failed the hurdle here. But based on my experience, one should be fine if they give it their best effort to learn the content.

Yes, with screen capture, but sometimes difficult to hear, especially audience discussions

Veronika Nemes

LOTS of information to absorb for each lecture. Ideally you should be keeping up and reviewing consistently (I didn't do this, it caused stress in the exam period!). That being said, Veronika obviously really knew her stuff having worked in the industry, and I always found lectures very interesting. Audience participation strongly encouraged, as mentioned above. Grey non-examinable slides were also provided for interest.

One mock exam, covering the first half of the semester to give you an idea of what to expect.

A lot of freedom was given in choosing your topic, as long as too many people weren't doing the same thing. You're given the choice between 3 presentation "types", academic, policy or pub, and can choose any "environmental economics" problem. A clear rubric was given, so getting a good mark was very doable with sufficient practice. The key point was to "extend"/add your own contribution and linked to/use the lecture content. Apart from your own, the other presentation sessions were optional to attend.

4.5 Out of 5 (now I know I've passed ), but feel this could vary greatly depending on what you're hoping to get out of it.

Environmental and Natural Resource (11th ed) by Tietenberg and Lewis. I bought it because I was very interested in the content and would ideally like to apply it in a future career, but definitely not necessary to have.

Also pretty interesting. The class would go through a problem set you'd have access to beforehand (sometimes with solutions), similar to standard economic tutorial questions. Also some discussion based questions, and we'd sometimes work on the questions in groups. While actual calculation based questions are not required for the MC final exam, most tutorial questions were still relevant/needed for the exam.

2 × 1 hour lectures, 1 × 1 hour tutorial (Generally per week, however 3 tutorials were replaced with presentation sessions in week 8, 9 and 10)

Semester 2, 2019

H2B