UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, LOS ANGELES

Economics 134 – Environmental Economics

Cameron

Becoming an expert in a particular area requires that you know how to use some of the very powerful tools available because of modern technology. During the course, you will be assigned some relatively simple "research" tasks designed to familiarize you with some facets of environmental and resource economics, while at the same time improving your searching skills using electronic media.

TASK 1. Using the ISI Citation Database (http://webofscience.com/ to finding the X most-cited articles (over the last five years) in the economics literature on a particular topic in environmental economics.

Assignment of topics will be according to some subset of the last two digits of your official student number. "ID ranges" will be associated with each topic. Find the topic associated with your ID range—this is the topic you have been assigned. (50% of your score will be deducted for doing a topic that does not match your student number.)

Save your searches (the search criteria you used) and submit for each of your X selections the Author, Title, Source, and Abstract. Record the number of citations each paper has received. We are developing an online system of "forms" that will allow you to copy and paste this information in a standard format so that the results of your searches can be shared online with others doing your same topic and with the entire class, when consensus has been reached. I will be commenting on the selections for each topic and helping the groups "winnow" the findings into a coherent collection. Here is my tentative list of topics. If you do not see your favorite issue represented, make a suggestion.

• Water Quality
• Endangered Species
• Population Growth
• Oil Extraction
• Mining (not Oil)
• Recycling
• Municipal Waste (Trash)
• Water Markets
• Groundwater Contamination
• Forests
• Commercial Fisheries
• Transferable Quotas
• Command and Control
• Transferable Emission Permits
• Emission Charges
• Stationary-Source Air Pollution
• Mobile-Source Air Pollution
• Alternative Fuel Vehicles
• Ozone Depletion
• Global Climate Change
• Oil Spills
• Toxic Substances
• Environmental Justice/Equity
• Environmental Kuznets Curve
• Travel Cost Method
• Contingent Valuation
• Hedonic Property Value Method
• Random Utility Models
• Recreational Fisheries
• National Parks
• Rivers
• Biodiversity

More details on this assignment will be available when the task is formally assigned.

TASK 2: Search the Los Angeles Times for articles over the last three years on environmental topics.

Got to the latimes.com ARCHIVE utility. I have secured funding to bring the LA Times Environmental Writer Marla Cone to speak to our class about California’s significant environmental issues during the quarter (timing to be arranged). Also, introduction to searches of other major newspapers (San Francisco Chronicle, Washington Post, New York Times).

TASK 3: Search <a href="http://webspirs.silverplatter.com/cgi-bin/customers/ucla/ucla-econ.cgi">Econlit </a> to find the earliest five significant papers in the Economics literature (published since 1969) on your assigned topic. EconLit is different from Web of Science in that it includes working papers, chapters in books and book reviews, in addition to just journal articles. It also goes back to 1969.

TASK 4: Search relevant MELVYL databases (TBA)