This course explores the economic and behavioural foundations of key environmental challenges, with a strong focus on identifying and evaluating policy solutions. It equips students with tools to assess sustainability problems and interventions, drawing from empirical research, economic reasoning, and real-world case studies.

We apply concepts from environmental and behavioural economics to understand how individual and collective behaviours contribute to environmental degradation. Particular emphasis is placed on consumption-related decisions-such as energy use, diet, and mobility-and on the psychological and institutional frictions that hinder more sustainable choices. Students focus on designing and evaluating behaviourally informed, context-specific interventions.

Students will engage with experimental studies, country-level comparisons, and applied policy design, with particular attention to contexts in developing countries.

A 2-hour lecture each week for 5 weeks (teaching weeks 1-5).

ECON5026: Policies for Sustainability And Development

ILOs

■ To develop an understanding of how everyday behaviours contribute to environmental problems and how economic and behavioural tools can be used to interpret them.

■ To equip students to design and critically assess behaviourally focused policy solutions that address environmental challenges at the individual level.

By the end of this course students will be able to:

1. Diagnose the behavioural and economic drivers of key sustainability challenges in consumption or mobility using empirical data and theory.

2. Design and assess a policy intervention aimed at changing behaviour and propose an empirical strategy to evaluate its effectiveness and potential side effects.

Students must submit at least 75% by weight of the components (including examinations) of the course's summative assessment.