ENSn4669 Institutional and Resource Economics

Faculty of Social Studies
Spring 2021
Extent and Intensity
2/0/0. 4 credit(s). Type of Completion: zk (examination).
Teacher(s)
Christian Kimmich, Ph.D., M.Sc. (lecturer)
Claudio Cattaneo, PhD (lecturer)
Guaranteed by
doc. Mgr. Bohuslav Binka, Ph.D.
Department of Environmental Studies – Faculty of Social Studies
Contact Person: Mgr. Kristína Markechová
Supplier department: Department of Environmental Studies – Faculty of Social Studies
Timetable
Fri 12:00–13:40 U53
Course Enrolment Limitations
The course is also offered to the students of the fields other than those the course is directly associated with.
The capacity limit for the course is 20 student(s).
Current registration and enrolment status: enrolled: 0/20, only registered: 0/20, only registered with preference (fields directly associated with the programme): 0/20
fields of study / plans the course is directly associated with
Course objectives
This course introduces the students to economic, sociological, and political approaches to institutions, with a focus on economic thought, but including a critical reflection and introduction of alternative analytical approaches. The students should know selected concepts and theories of institutional and resource analysis and be able to understand different applications. Finally, the participants should be prepared to transfer parts of the acquired knowledge to cases of their own interest.
Learning outcomes
After this course participants will have gathered a basic understanding of the concepts of institutions related to natural resources and the environment. The students should understand the relevance and limitations of different approaches to institutional and resource analysis; be able to explain alternative approaches to institutional and resource analysis of water, energy, and land in the context of agriculture, forestry, and fisheries and critically reflect their implications; be able to use and apply simple models, and get an intuition of complex system dynamics; understand and interpret applications and underlying methods; be able to transfer and apply the acquired knowledge to a self-selected case.
Syllabus
  • 1. Introduction. Basic concepts, course outline, relevance, and applications. 2. Institutions: The individual, the society, and the environment. Definitions and language. Formal and informal rules, rules in-use versus rules in-form, conventions, strategies, motivation, interests, rationality, heuristics, norms, and values. Sociological, economic and political perspectives. 3. Institutions: Coordination and conflict, power, institutional stability, change and evolution. Institutional diversity and pluralism. 4. Classical and New Institutional Economics: different positions, values, and world views. Actor-centred institutionalism and situationism. 5. Property rights and typologies of resource regimes and governance: Private, Club, Common, Open Access, and Public Goods. Governance structures and externalities versus transactions. 6. The Institutional Analysis and Development framework and the Ostrom school of political theory and policy analysis. 8. Resource Economics: The use and limitations of models. Stocks, flows, and funds. Exponential and logistic growth, Gordon-Schaefer models. Renewable and non-renewable resources: water, energy, land and climate change in agriculture, forestry, and fisheries. 9. Ecological Resource Economics: towards an intuition of complex system dynamics. Lotka-Volterra models, steady states, stability, tipping points, thresholds, leverage points, resilience and collapse. 10. Applications and methods of Institutional and Resource Economics: Selected cases on exploitation, degradation, erosion, and conservation in agriculture, forestry, and fisheries. Methodological reflection and interactive debate. 11. Group work presentation and discussion on applications selected by the students. 12. Towards Social-Ecological Systems and Sustainability Transformations.
Literature
    required literature
  • • Vatn, Arild (2005). Institutions and the Environment. Edward Elgar Publishing.
  • • Ostrom, Elinor (2005). Understanding Institutional Diversity. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
  • • Grafton, Q., Adamowicz, W., Dupont, D., Nelson, H., Hill, R. J., & Renzetti, S. (2008). The economics of the environment and natural resources. John Wiley & Sons.
    recommended literature
  • • Bromley, D. W., & Paavola, J. (Eds.). (2008). Economics, ethics, and environmental policy: Contested choices. John Wiley & Sons.
  • • Kaufman, B. E. (2006). The institutional economics of John R. Commons: complement and substitute for neoclassical economic theory. Socio-Economic Review, 5(1), 3-45.
  • • Johnson, C. (2004). Uncommon ground: the ‘poverty of history’in common property discourse. Development and change, 35(3), 407-434.
Teaching methods
Lectures and group exercises with short presentations and discussion.
Assessment methods
Essay and presentation (50%), and oral exam (50%).
Language of instruction
English
Further Comments
Study Materials
The course is taught annually.
The course is also listed under the following terms Spring 2020, Spring 2022, Spring 2023, Spring 2024, Spring 2025.
  • Enrolment Statistics (Spring 2021, recent)
  • Permalink: https://is.muni.cz/course/fss/spring2021/ENSn4669