Resource Economics

Knowledge
You should

• the impact of scarcity on the extraction and price paths of natural resources under various institutional settings
• be able to derive the || chr(38) ||ldquo;Hotelling rule || chr(38) ||rdquo;, the || chr(38) ||ldquo;Faustmann rule || chr(38) ||rdquo; and the corresponding optimality condition for simple models of renewable resources
• be familiar with policy problems related to exhaustion of non-renewable resources and overutilization of renewable resources, common pool problems and sustainability concepts

Skills
You should

• have a good understanding of the basic theory of resource economics
• be able to solve stylized problems within the area of the course, which requires to some extent practical skills in formulating, interpreting, and solving optimal control problems. Students without sufficient mathematical background may have to put in extra effort to acquire these skills
• have an initial overview of central contributions to the field and obtain a handle to further explore the scientific literature

Competence
You should

• be able to read and understand project reports and journal articles that make use of the concepts and methods that are introduced in the course
• be able to make use of the course content in your own academic work, for example in analyses that are part of the master || chr(38) ||rsquo;s thesis

Students who are admitted to study programmes at UiO must each semester register which courses and exams they wish to sign up for in StudentWeb.

Students enrolled in other Master || chr(38) ||#39;s Degree Programmes can, on application, be admitted to the course if this is cleared by their own study programme.

International applicants, if you are not already enrolled as a student at UiO, please see our information about admission requirements and procedures for international applicants.

The examination in this course is not available for external candidates. Only students admitted to the course may sit for the examination.

Lectures: 2 hours per week throughout the semester.

Seminar: 2 hours per week through parts of the semester.

There might occur weeks exempt from teaching.

The examination will be a 3-hour written school exam.

Previous exams and examiner guidelines

Exam papers with comments from examiner

No examination support material is allowed.

You can usually resit an exam, but the conditions depend on whether you had a valid reason for absence from the regular exam. Read more about resitting an exam.

The Department of Economics has passed following resolution for ECON-courses: It will no longer be possible for candidates to register for an exam in a lower level course after having passed exams in intermediate and advanced level courses in the same subject area (also where there are no pre-requisites that apply to the intermediate course). Further information can be found here.

Students who might wish to retake the exam later, are not guaranteed that the course is ever repeated with a similar reading list, nor that the exam arrangement will be the same.

Grades are awarded on a scale from A to F, where A is the best grade and F is a fail. Read more about the grading system.

The problem set will be given in English. Answers can be given in Norwegian, Swedish, Danish or in English. See || chr(38) ||sect; 6.4 i Forskrift om studier og eksamener ved Universitetet i Oslo .

You may request an explanation of your grades, and you may also appeal against your grades or make a complaint about formal examination errors. Read more about explanations and appeals.

Evaluation

Feedback from our students is essential to us in our efforts to ensure and further improve the high quality of our programmes and courses. All courses are subject to continuous evaluation. At regular intervals we also ask students on a particular course to participate in a more comprehensive, periodic evaluation of this course.

Overlapping courses

Reading list

Textbook

Perman, R., Y. Ma, J. McGilvray and M. Common: Natural Resource and Environmental Economics, 4th Ed., 2011. Pearson Education Ltd.

Articles and other texts

Bohn, H. and Deacon, R. T. (2000). Ownership risk, investment, and the use of natural resources. The American Economic Review, 90(3):526¿549.

Brander, J. A. and Taylor, M. S. (1997). International trade and open-access renewable resources: The small open economy case. The Canadian Journal of Economics, 30(3):526¿552.

Bulte, E. and Barbier, E. (2005). Trade and renewable resources in a second best world: An overview. Environmental and Resource Economics, 30:423¿463. 10.1007/s10640-004-5022-2.

Burgess, R., Hansen, M., Olken, B. A., Potapov, P, and Sieber, S. (2012). The Political Economy of Deforestation in the Tropics. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, online first.

Cairns, R. D. (1990). The economics of exploration for non-renewable resources. Journal of Economic Surveys, 4(4):361¿395.

Copeland, B. R. and Taylor, M. S. (2009). Trade, tragedy, and the commons. American Economic Review, 99(3):725¿49.

Dasgupta, P. and Heal, G. (1974). The optimal depletion of exhaustible resources. The review of economic studies, 41:3¿28.

Farzin, Y. H. (1992). The time path of scarcity rent in the theory of exhaustible resources. The Economic Journal, 102(413):813-830.

Harstad, B. (2012). Buy coal! a case for supply-side environmental policy. Journal of Political Economy, 120(1):77¿115.

Hart, R. and Spiro, D. (2011). The elephant in hotelling¿s room. Energy Policy, 39(12):7834¿7838.

Hartwick, J. M. (1977). Intergenerational equity and the investing of rents from exhaustible resources. The American Economic Review, 67(5):972¿974.

Hassler, J., Krusell, P., and Olovsson, C. (2012). Energy-saving technical change. Technical report, National Bureau of Economic Research.

Heal, G. (1976). Th

If you have a disability or a health problem that entails significant inconvenience in an examination situation, you may be considered for special examination arrangements. Mothers who are breastfeeding may apply for extra time to complete the exam.

A student may sit this exam up to 3 times. If a student wishes to withdraw from the exam, s/he must do so in StudentWeb at least two weeks prior to the first day of the exam. Failure to do so will be counted as one of the three opportunities to sit the exam.