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Foundations of Ecological Economics

Code: 42407
Credits: 9
2026/2027
Degree programme Type Course
Interdisciplinary Studies in Environmental, Economic and Social Sustainability OP 1

Contact lecturer

Name :
Sergio Villamayor Tomas
Email :
sergio.villamayor@uab.cat

Teaching staff

Laura Perez Sanchez
Jeroen van den Bergh
Lewis Carl King
Jesús Ramos Martin
Sergio Villamayor Tomas

Group languages

You can consult this information at the end of the document.

Prerequisites

No aplica.

Objectives

The course will introduce the field of ecological economics, paying attention to theoretical, methodological and empirical issues. Classic themes, important debates and recent research foci will receive attention. At the end of the course, the student is expected to have a good understanding of the main themes, theories and methods addressed by ecological economics, including:

  • the origins and principles of ecological economics;
  • core differences between environmental and ecological economics
  • concepts and typologies of welfare, externalities and (quasi-)public goods;
  • the performance of environmental policy instruments;
  • challenges of global climate mitigation
  • theory and methods of environmental valuation;
  • property rights theory as applied to natural resource management
  • modes of environmental governance
  • institutional analysis of natural resource management
  • the concept of socio-ecosystem metabolism
  • multi-scale integrated assessment and social multi-criteria evaluation;
  • assessment and valuation of ecosystem services;
  • proposals to go beyond GDP;
  • the growth-versus-environmental debate and the ideas of degrowth and agrowth.



Learning outcomes

  • CA19 (Evaluate, from the perspective of ecological economics, the environmental impacts and potential sustainable management solutions through environmental assessment.) Evaluate, from the perspective of ecological economics, the environmental impacts and potential sustainable management solutions through environmental assessment.
  • CA20 (Critically evaluate the ethical and social implications of economic decisions in the field of environmental economics.) Critically evaluate the ethical and social implications of economic decisions in the field of environmental economics.
  • CA21 (Demonstrate ethical responsibility in the analysis and proposal of solutions from ecological economics for socio-environmental management that respects biological and cultural diversity.) Demonstrate ethical responsibility in the analysis and proposal of solutions from ecological economics for socio-environmental management that respects biological and cultural diversity.
  • KA20 (Define the origins, principles and key concepts of ecological economics, such as complexity, exosomatic evolution, well-being and externalities, and environmental policy instruments.) Define the origins, principles and key concepts of ecological economics, such as complexity, exosomatic evolution, well-being and externalities, and environmental policy instruments.
  • KA21 (Describe the integration between economics and biophysical systems, including concepts such as ecological footprint, rebound effects, socioeconomic metabolism, environmental services, and institutions.) Describe the integration between economics and biophysical systems, including concepts such as ecological footprint, rebound effects, socioeconomic metabolism, environmental services, and institutions.
  • KA22 (Define the main debates around economic growth and global change from the perspective of ecological economics.) Define the main debates around economic growth and global change from the perspective of ecological economics.
  • SA20 (Apply Multicriteria Analysis and computer applications for decision-making in complex environmental problems.) Apply Multicriteria Analysis and computer applications for decision-making in complex environmental problems.
  • SA21 (Analyse the behaviour of relevant economic agents in environmental problems from the perspective of ecological economics.) Analyse the behaviour of relevant economic agents in environmental problems from the perspective of ecological economics.

Contents

The FEE course involves a series of 3-hour lectures organized in four main sub-modules under the responsibility of specific teachers. All readings will be available on Moodle or provided in electronic format by the teacher through other means.


Program

Introduction (JvdB)

  1. Principles of ecological economics and comparison with environmental economics (13/10)


Sub-Module 1: Environmental and climate economics (JvdB & LK)

  1. Welfare, markets, externalities and public goods
  2. Theories and methods of environmental valuation
  3. Environmental policy instruments
  4. Challenges of climate change mitigation
  5. Global climate policy

Sub-Module 2: Institutional economics and environmental applications (SV)

  1. Introduction institutional economics
  2. Basics of game theory and coordination problems
  3. Property rights and the theory of the commons
  4. Environmental governance: Markets, governments and communities
  5. An institutional economics view of environmental policy instruments: the case of Payment for ecosystem services


Sub-Module 3: Methods for integrated assessment (JR, LP)

  1. Social multi-criteria evaluation – SMCE
  2. Biophysical Input-Output analysis
  3. Analysis of the metabolism of societies
  4. Case studies of metabolism of societies


Sub-Module 4: Ecological macroeconomics (LK)

  1. Economics of wellbeing
  2. Alternatives to green growth
  3. Environment vs growth class debate


Learning activities and methodology

Title Hours ECTS Learning outcomes
Lectures 46 1.84 KA20, KA21, KA22
Three short essays which involve reading the necessary literature to write the essays 60 2.4 CA19, CA20, CA21, SA20, SA21
Reading articles, books and studying for each of the given lectures and the final exam 108 4.32 CA19, CA20, CA21, SA20, SA21
In-class activities and discussion in class 8 0.32 CA19, CA20, CA21, SA20, SA21

Lectures will involve time for questions/ answers, debates, role-play exercises and video-material. Students will be expected to prepare for the class by going in advance through the compulsory readings suggested in the bibliography. Participation, tests and essays may involve individual and group work.

Annotation: within the schedule set by the centre or degree programme, 15 minutes of one class will be reserved for students to evaluate their lecturers and their courses or modules through questionnaires.

Assessment

Continuous assessment activities

Title Weight Hours ECTS Learning outcomes
Final Exam 50% 3 0.12 KA20, KA21, KA22
3 short essays 50% 0 0 CA19, CA20, CA21, SA20, SA21

This module does not offer a single assessment method, in accordance with the coordination of the degree programme and with the Dean’s Office of the Faculty of Sciences.

Students will be assessed based on a closed-book exam and three essays:

Exam

The exam accounts for 50% of the final grade. It will cover aspects of each module of the course. Students will have limited space to answer each question and will be expected to demonstrate that they understand and have mastered the key concepts and ideas introduced during the course. The contributing teachers will evaluate the exam jointly.

Essays

  1. A 500-word essay explaining the student’s position in the environment-versus-growth debate, corresponding to sub-module 4. This essay accounts for 10% of the final grade.
  2. A 1,000-word critical essay based on the experimental game, corresponding to sub-module 2. This essay accounts for 20% of the final grade.
  3. A 1,000-word critical essay corresponding to sub-module 3. This essay accounts for 20% of the final grade.

Students are required to submit their essays through editable versions of Google Documents that record additions, modifications, and deletions as evidence of their work process. If the use of artificial intelligence is suspected, students will be required to defend their essay in an oral examination.

Students who do not take the exam cannot be evaluated.

Students who fail the exam (less than 50% of the available points) will have one opportunity to retake it. If a student fails the exam a second time, they will fail the module.


Bibliography

The literature marked with (*) is obligatory and must be read prior to each lecture as it forms the basis for discussions in the respective class. While the other literature mentioned serves as voluntary background reading, students are encouraged to read as much of it as they can.

 

1. Principles of ecological economics and comparison with environmental economics
(*) van den Bergh, J.C.J.M. 2000. Ecological Economics: Themes, Approaches, and Differences with Environmental Economics. Regional Environmental Change, 3(1): 13-23.

Røpke, I. 2005. Trends in the development of ecological economics from the late 1980s to the early 2000s. Ecological Economics 55: 262-290.

 

2. Welfare, markets, externalities and public goods
(*) Kahn, J.R. 2011. The Economic Approach to Environmental and Natural Resources. 3rd edition, Thomson/South-Western, Fort Worth, Mason, Ohio. ch. 2; & ch. 4, section \"What is Value\".

(*) Verhoef, E.T. 1999. Externalities. Chapter 13 in: J.C. J.M. van den Bergh (ed.). Handbook of Environmental and Resource Economics. Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, pp. 197-214.

 

3. Theories and methods of environmental valuation
(*) Perman et al., Valuing the Environment, Chapter 4 in Natural Resource and Environmental Economics.

Martinez-Alier, J., Munda, J., O'Neill, J. 1998. Weak comparability of values as a foundation for ecological economics. Ecological Economics 26: 277-286.

Gsottbauer, E., I. Logar and J. van den Bergh (2015). Towards a fair, constructive and consistent criticism of all valuation languages: Comment on Kallis et al. (2013). Ecological Economics 112: 164-169.

 

4. Environmental policy instruments
(*) Harris, J. M., & Roach, B. (2018). Environmental and natural resource economics: A contemporary approach. Routledge. 176-203 .

van den Bergh, J., Castro, J., S. Drews, F. Exadaktylos, J. Foramitti, F. Klein, T. Konc and I. Savin (2021). Designing an effective climate-policy mix: Accounting for instrument synergy. Climate Policy 21(6): 745-764.

 

5. Challenges of climate change mitigation
(*) Harris, J. M., & Roach, B. (2018). Environmental and natural resource economics: A contemporary approach. Routledge. 306-330.

(*) Anderson, K. (2015). Duality in climate science. Nature Geoscience, 8(12), 898-900.

Brockway, P. E., Sorrell, S., Semieniuk, G., Heun, M. K., & Court, V. (2021). Energy efficiency and economy-wide rebound effects: A review of the evidence and its implications. Renewable and sustainable energy reviews, 141, 110781.

 

6. Global climate policy
(*) Harris, J. M., & Roach, B. (2018). Environmental and natural resource economics: A contemporary approach. Routledge. 336-368.

King, L. C., & van den Bergh, J. (2019). Normalisation of Paris agreement NDCs to enhance transparency and ambition. Environmental Research Letters, 14(8), 084008.

Baranzini, A, J. van den Bergh, S. Carattini, R. Howard, E. Padilla and J. Roca (2017). Carbon pricing in climate policy: Seven reasons, complementary instruments, and political-economy considerations. WIREs Climate Change 8(4), e462.

 

7. Introduction institutional economics
(*) Paavola, J., and W. N. Adger (2005), Institutional ecological economics, Ecological Economics, 53(3), 353-368.

(*) Vatn, A., (2007), 1. Institutions the web of human life, in Vatn, A. Institutions and the Environment: Edward Elgar Publishing (pp. 1-20).

Hodgson, G. M. (1998), The Approach of Institutional Economics, Journal of Economic Literature, 36(1), 166-192.

Hall, P. A., andR. C. R. Taylor (1996), Political Science and the Three New Institutionalisms*, Political Studies, 44(5), 936-957.

 

8. Basics of game theory and coordination problems
(*) Bowles, S., (2009), Social interactions and institutional design, in Bowles, S., Microeconomics: behavior, institutions, and evolution: Princeton University Press (pp. 23-56).

Varian, H. R., and J. Repcheck, (2010), Chapters 28 and 29, in Varian, H.R., and J. Repcheck, Intermediate microeconomics: a modern approach, (Vol. 6): WW Norton & Company New York, NY.

 

9. Property rights and the theory of the commons
(*) Cole, D. H., G. Epstein, and M. D. McGinnis (2014), Digging deeper into Hardin's pasture: the complex institutional structure of 'the tragedy of the commons', Journal of Institutional Economics, 10(3), 353-369.

(*) Bromley, D. W., & Hodge, I. (1990). Private property rights and presumptive policy entitlements: reconsidering the premises of rural policy. European Review of agricultural economics, 17(2), 197214.

Schlager, E., and E. Ostrom (1992), Property-Rights Regimes and Natural Resources: A Conceptual Analysis, Land Economics, 68(3), 249-262.

 

10. Environmental governance: Markets, governments and communities
(*) Vatn, A. (2010), An institutional analysis of payments for environmental services, Ecological Economics, 69 (6), 1245-1252.

(*) Ostrom, E. (2010), Polycentric systems for coping with collective action and global environmental change, Global Environmental Change, 20(4), 550-557.

Acheson, J. M. (2006), Institutional Failure in Resource Management, Annual Review of Anthropology, 35, 117-134.

Lemos, M. C., and A. Agrawal (2006), Environmental governance, Annu. Rev. Environ. Resour., 31, 297-325.

 

11. An institutional economics view of environmental policy instruments: the case of Payment for ecosystem services

(*) Muradian, R. (2013), Payments for ecosystem services as incentives for collective action, Society & Natural Resources, 26(10), 1155-1169.

 

12. Social multi-criteria evaluation – SMCE
(*) Munda, G. (2004): “Social multi-criteria evaluation: methodological foundations and operational consequences”, European Journal of Operational Research, Vol 158(3): Pp 662-677.

Martinez-Alier, J., Munda, G., O'Neill, J. (1998): “Weak comparability of values as a foundation for ecological economics”, Ecological Economics, 26 (3): 277-286

 

13.Biophysical Input-Output Analysis
(*) Eurostat, Producing environmental accounts with environmentally extended input output analysis — 2021 edition.

Tukker at al (2016). Environmental and resource footprints in a global context: Europe’s structural deficit in resource endowments. Global Environmental Change, 40:171:181. Walter, M., Latorre Tomás,

 

14. Analysis of the metabolism of societies
(*) Giampietro, M., Mayumi, K., Ramos-Martin, J. (2009): “Multi-scale integrated analysis of societal and ecosystem metabolism (MuSIASEM): Theoretical concepts and basic rationale”, Energy 34(3): 313-322.

(*) Gerber, J.F. and Scheidel, A. (2017): “In search of substantive economics: comparing today's two major socio-metabolic approaches to the Economy - MEFA and MuSIASEM”, Ecological Economics, 144: 186-194

Haberl, H., Fischer-Kowalski, M., Krausmann, F., Weisz, H., Winiwarter, V. (2004): “Progress towards sustainability? What the conceptual framework of material and energy flow accounting (MEFA) can offer”, Land Use Policy, Vol. 21 (3): 199-213.

 

15 Case studies of metabolism of societies
(*) Pérez-Sánchez, L., Giampietro, M.,Velasco-Fernández, R., Ripa, M. (2019): “Characterizing the metabolic pattern of urban systems using MuSIASEM: The case of Barcelona”, Energy Policy, Vol. 124: 13-22.

(*) Samaniego, P., Vallejo, M.C., Martínez-Alier, J. (2017): “Commercial and biophysical déficits in South America, 1990-2013”, Ecological Economics, Vol. 133: 62-73.

Parra, R., Di Felice, L.J., Giampietro, M., Ramos-Martin, J. (2018): “The metabolismo f oil extraction: A bottom-up approach applied to the case of Ecuador”, Energy Policy, Vol. 122: 63-74.

Ramos-Martín J., Cañellas-Boltà S., Giampetro M., Gamboa G., (2009): “Catalonia's energy metabolism: Using the MuSIASEM approach at different scales”, Energy Policy, vol 37: 4658-4671. Serrano-Tovar, T., Giampietro, M. (2014): “Multi-scale integrated análisis of rural Laos: Studying metabolic patterns of land uses across different levels and scales”, Land Use Policy, Vol. 36: 155-170.

 

16. Economics of wellbeing
(*) van den Bergh, J.C.J.M. 2009. The GDP Paradox. Journal of Economic Psychology, 30(2): 117-135.

(*) Bleys, B. (2012). Beyond GDP: Classifying alternative measures for progress. Social Indicators Research, 109, 355-376.

Fioramonti, L., Coscieme, L., Costanza, R., Kubiszewski, I., Trebeck, K., Wallis, S., ... & De Vogli, R. (2022). Wellbeing economy: An effective paradigm to mainstream post-growth policies?. Ecological Economics, 192, 107261.

 

17. Alternatives to green growth
(*) Bowen, Alex, and Cameron Hepburn. 2014. Greengrowth: an assessment. Oxford Review of Economic Policy 30.3: 407-422.

(*) Hickel, J., & Kallis, G. (2020). Is green growth possible?. New political economy, 25(4), 469-486.

D’Alessandro, S., Cieplinski, A., Distefano, T., & Dittmer, K. (2020). Feasible alternatives to green growth. Nature Sustainability, 3(4), 329-335.

 

18. Environment vs growth class debate
(*) Kallis, G. 2011. In defence of degrowth. Ecological Economics, 70(5): 873-880.

(*) van den Bergh, J.C.J.M. 2011. Environmentversus growth - A criticism of \"degrowth\" and a plea for \"a-growth”. Ecological Economics, 70(5): 881-890.

King, L. C., Savin, I., & Drews, S. (2023). Shades of green growth scepticism among climate policy researchers. Nature Sustainability, 6(11), 1316-1320.

 

Software

None

Course groups and languages

The information provided is provisional until November 30. After this date, you will be able to consult the language of each group through this link. To access the information, you will need to enter the course CODE

Type of teaching Group Language Semester Shift
(TEm) Theory (master) 1 English first semester morning-mixed