Applied Economics of Forest and Nature

Learning outcome
The course aims at imparting to the students a thorough understanding of economic reasoning and knowledge of how to apply economics as a tool for decision-making on the utilisation of forests and other (renewable) natural resources in rural and urban environments.

When the course is finished, it is expected that the student can/have:

Knowledge:
Describe principles and procedures of forest and natural resource economics
Identify links between the ecological processes and the economic consequences and human goals
Understand and reflect on economic perspectives of long vs short term management decisions
Understand the economic value of different aspects in multiple-use forest and nature management and their possible conflicts or joint production possibilities
Classify and reflect on principles from the theory
Understand the principles of economic valuation of non-marketed goods
Show overview of socio-economic analysis of forest and nature goods

Skills:
Economically apply and analyse theoretical and practical models for forest and nature management
Apply the appropriate theory and methods to relevant economic valuation in forest and nature management
Asses the possibilities and limitations of economic theories and methodologies related to forest and nature management
Understand and reflect critically on socio-economic analyses of forest and nature
Apply economic theory to analyse and model the welfare and business economic values of forests and natural resources

Competences:
Apply principles and procedures of forest and natural resource economics to management decisions, including transferring principles of the economic valuation from one kind of good to another
Evaluate economically different goods and services from the same natural resource and identify possible joint production possibilities or economic conflicts
Discuss the relevance, reliability and validity of different natural resource economic methods
Evaluate socio-economic analysis of forest and nature goods, including distributional effects
Take into account the demands of society when applying bioeconomic models in order to evaluate projects economically