The program in Environmental and Resource Economics seeks to enhance the quality of environmental education at the University of Illinois. It offers courses covering modern economic theory and its application to problems in environmental regulation, environmental quality and natural resource management. These courses draw students from several departments.

Below is the list of courses associated with pERE:

Environmental Economics
(ACE 210/ECON 210/ENVS210/NRES 210/UP 210)
Economic issues surrounding environmental quality, including: costs and benefits of environmental protection; economics of environmental policies (such as those dealing with toxics, water, and air pollution, and municipal solid waste); and economics of international environmental problems (such as ozone depletion and climate change)

Natural Resource Economics
(ACES 310/ENVS 310/NRES 310)
Economic principles are used to analyze a broad range of natural resource policy and management issues. Economic concepts developed include public goods, social welfare, discounting, dynamic efficiency, and resource scarcity. Natural resources examined include biodiversity, fisheries, forests, minerals, soil, and water resources.

Environment and Development
(ACE 411)
Relationship between economic development and environmental sustainability through application of cost-benefit analysis and environmental economics. Developing and developed country issues are considered with an emphasis on hands-on applications of project appraisal, social benefit-cost analysis, green accounting, and non-market valuation.

Advanced Natural Resource Economics
(ACE 510/ECON 515/ENVS 510/NRES 510)
Economic theory is used to examine the allocation of renewable and efficiency issues that arise from natural resource policy and management issues.

Environmental Economics: Theory and Application
(ACE 516/ECON 516/ENVS 511)
Examines both theory and policy applications in the environmental area; selectively reviews the literature to provide a framework for understanding the relevant economic relationships and the criteria appropriate for policy assessment; emphasizes the characteristics of major environmental problems and policy choices; and considers the valuation of environmental amenities and the conflict between environmental quality and growth.

Dynamic Simulation of Natural Resource Problems
(GEOG 467/ECON 415)
Examines the development of the physically based theories of scarcity and a comparison to the historical and most recent economic theories of scarcity of critical resources, especially energy, and their expected application in local, regional, national, and international situations.

General Equilibrium Analysis of Environmental Tax Policy
(Finance 580, Econ XXX, ACE XXX)
This 2-credit (halfsize) course for PhD students is not a survey of literature, but is focused on methods to build and use analytical general equilibrium models to do research. Examples are from environmental tax policy, but it is useful for trade, development, and other fields. We find closed-form solutions for the effects of a policy change on all factor prices, input quantities, outputs, prices, pollution, and welfare. A draft and paper are required, but no final exam.

Environmental and Resource Economics Workshop
(ACE 594)
Presentation and development of student research, and presentations by faculty and external speakers on current research in environmental and resource economics.