Our new web site can be accessed at www.helsinki.fi/environmental-and-resource-economics. These pages are not updated anymore.

Environmental and resource economics studies the interaction of society and environment, environmental issues and problems, and nature conservation by applying economic theory and methods. The scope of environmental and resource economics includes both positive and normative analysis. The positive analysis studies how economic actions affect natural resources and environment, while the normative analysis studies the preferred environmental behavior of the society, and how it compares to the behavior in the markets. The goal is to find ways to fix market failures so that natural resources are utilized sustainably, while preventing the degradation of nature. The theory and empirical applications of environmental and resource economics are based on the general economic theory, especially microeconomic theory, public economic theory and capital theory, in addition to methods of empirical research.