Differentiating between neoclassical and ecological economics
Course Learning Outcome
Construct the pre-analytic vision of ecological economics
Sub-module Outcome
Differentiate between neoclassical welfare economics and ecological economics.
Activities
- Reading: Chapter 2 of Daly’s and Farley’s (2004) Ecological Economics: Principles and Applications.
- Discussion board: Read the “Economic Man” and “Wants” from the New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics. State whether you believe humans actually act in such a manner in their daily lives. How do these actions and beliefs differ from those held within ecological economics? Read the postings of some of your classmates and comment on them.
- Wiki: Create a chart comparing and contrasting ecological economics and neoclassical economics. On each respective side put the main points for each school of thought. For each major point also write down the reasoning behind the development of these practices and their goals, these may be either historical or current needs.
- Video: Watch ‘Principles of economics, translated’ by the Standup Economist
- Project reading: Part 1 & Part 2 of chapter 1 in Farley, Erickson, and Daly (2005), Ecological Economics: A Workbook for Problem-based Learning.
- Discussion board/Project assignment: Begin choosing a problem and your partners. Post an idea for a problem on a discussion board, or if someone has already posted a problem that interests you, post your ideas there.
Self Check
At the end of this section you should be able to answer the following questions:
- What is uneconomic growth?
- What is a pre-analytic vision?
- What is the pre-analytic vision of ecological economics, and how does it contrast with that of neoclassical economics?
- What is scale and what is optimal scale?
- What is distribution?
- What is allocation?
- What are the central differences between ecological economics and neoclassical economics?
