*Applied Ecological Economics 2001

Anyone who participated in AEE 1001 earlier this year and is interested in deepening their understanding of ecological economics, is welcome to participate in AEE 2001.

This will be offered with same once-a-month class meeting format on the fourth Wednesday of the month. We will not be rigid about requiring participation in AEE 1001 as a pre-requisite for participating in AEE 2001, but please note that we will assume participants in AEE 2001 are familiar with the ideas in Daly & Farley's Ecological Economics.

A participant with a bit of spare time on his or her hands, could conceivably undertake AEE 1001 and AEE 2001 concurrently, but it would involve a lot of reading. A participant who at some point did at least a year of post-secondary mathematics and at least two years of mainstream economics, and still remembers a bit of what they did in those courses, might be able to participate effectively in AEE 2001 without first participating in AEE 1001. Anyone who wants to jump straight in to AEE 2001 on the basis of having the math and econ background, but who did not do any post-secondary study in any one of physics, chemistry, biology or ecology, would be well-advised, though, to read Parts I and II of Daly & Farley (the first 7 chapters in the first edition) by the time of the November class meeting.

To the extent that we have a core text for AEE 2001, it is The Economics of Natural Resource Use, by John Hartwick and Nancy Olewiler. This is a textbook written more in the idiom of (neo-classical) environmental economics than that of ecological economics. It makes greater use of mathematics than Daly & Farley, primarily in the interests of precision and logical rigour, but it is not mathematically formidable at all. It also has a faint EE sensibility.

Our course objective will be to develop a commentary and critique of the book, addressing its shortcomings from an EE perspective. Our work on this can then facilitate future more advanced courses in EE, since an obvious EE textbook with which to go on to the next level of depth after Daly & Farley, does not, to my knowledge, exist yet.

There will be a number of other references provided, but one in particular, seems worth mentioning immediately. It is Supply Shock, by Brian Czech. Brian earned his Ph.D in Renewable Natural Resource Studies and has worked primarily in the area Conservation Biology, but he demonstrates in Supply Shock a remarkable grasp of economics in general, and of the history of economic thought as it relates to the mysterious disappearance of concern for natural capital in neo-classical microeconomics and mainstream macroeconomics, in particular. Brian is a keynote speaker, by the way at the CANSEE conference in Toronto, in early November.

We are hoping to prepare a resource kit of material for AEE 2001 so no one reluctant to buy the Hartwick & Olewiler text out of concern for costs, should feel
at a disadvantage. We are also planning to devote the first class to a review of the math we will use (no proofs and no great emphasis on skill in solving mathematically formulated problems - just an outline of the common symbols and constructs, their meaning, and their use in economics), and the second to reviewing conventional microeconomics, and the critique and extensions of it, central to the EE approach.

Please contact Michael Barkusky by email if you wish to take this class, and especially if you would like to attend a session without coming to the first or any earlier meeting.