This thesis examines various aspects of environmental economics. The first chapter estimates how individuals' beliefs about climate change are affected by local weather fluctuations. Climate change is a one-time uncertain event with no opportunities for learning; the belief updating process may not be fully Bayesian. Using unique survey data on beliefs about the occurrence of the effects of glo...

An introductory course in environmental economics typically teaches students that the design and evaluation of a policy to deal with an environmental problem boils down to cost-benefit analysis. The instructor might proceed as follows. Left to their own, humans (i.e., producers and consumers) do bad things to the environment, such as polluting rivers and lakes, spewing sulfur dioxide into the a...

Traditional environmental and resource economics uses rational choice theory to guide theevaluation of alternative policy options to correct market failure. Behavioral economics,however, has challenged this conventional mindset by showing how people frequently makechoices and state values that deviate from the presumption of rationality, i.e., behavioralfailures. This article ex...

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