Topics in Agricultural and Environmental Economics

The course explores selected topics of current research at the intersection of agricultural and environmental economics, focusing on economic analysis of food systems, natural resources, pollution and sustainability challenges. Different themes taking outset in current research undertaken by research staff from Department of Food and Resource Economics (IFRO) will be investigated. For each theme, students are guided by the responsible researcher, read and discuss relevant high level foundational papers and current IFRO research. Through lectures, guided reading and discussion of theoretical and empirical papers and current research in the different themes, students will gain insights into how research in agricultural and environmental economics is undertaken and how it builds on prior research to facilitate better understanding of current research challenges.

The main objective of the course is to enable students to gain insights into how contemporary research in agricultural and environmental economics can contribute to understanding and solving current sustainability and ecosystem challenges. Through lectures and presentation of recent advanced journal articles and research, students will be trained in reading scientific articles from leading economics journals and apply this systematic knowledge to analyse the problems at hand. Studying journal articles may be both challenging and time-consuming for the students. An important part of the course is therefore to help students overcome these challenges and to show them how to approach such literature in a fruitful way.