A graduate course in the economics of marine resources. Covers open access and the rent dissipation problem, rights-based management, bioeconomic modeling, and the valuation of non-market goods.
Adjustment costs receive extended treatment. Standard models assume that participants exit a declining fishery when returns fall, and observed behavior departs from this substantially. The binding constraints are commonly licensing, debt and vessel capital, which has direct consequences for the design of transition programs — most of which are built on the opposite assumption.
Valuation is taught alongside a sustained account of what it does not establish. Assigning a monetary value to a coastal wetland is useful within a cost-benefit process that would otherwise assign zero. That is a separate claim from the value being correct, and the distinction becomes more consequential as the technique gains acceptance.