212-316 Resource Economics & Management

On completion of this course students will understand social cost-benefit analyses, have an understanding of welfare economics and the questions of efficiency and distribution, be able to make resource management decisions on an economic basis, be familiar with the methods for the economic evaluation of non-market goods, and be familiar with the issues of resource conservation and degradation in Australia. The content will cover financial and economic analysis: inflation, discounting, taxes and subsidies, criteria; principles of welfare economics; benefit-cost analysis: criteria, opportunity costs, market prices versus shadow prices, transfer payments, non-market goods and services; recreation economics: willingness to pay, travel cost method, introduction to contingent valuation; conservation economics: public consumption goods, hedonic prices, contingent valuation; theory of common property resource use; non-renewable resources; environmental constraints to Australian agriculture; and economic and policy analysis of land and water use and of resource degradation issues such as soil acidity, salinity, erosion, vegetation decline.

One 3-hour examination at the end of the semester worth 60% and assessment tasks worth 40%.

• J A Sinden and D J Thampapillai, Introduction to Benefit-Cost Analysis. Longman, 1995.