Special Course
Resource Dynamics
Lecturer
Professor Dr Sjak Smulders (Tilburg University, Netherlands)
Date: March 12 and 13 (online), 15:30–17:30, and March 17-19, 2026
Timetable:
Tuesday, March 17:
9:00 a.m. – 11:00 a.m., break: 30 min, 11:30 a.m. – 1:00 p.m., break: 60 min, 2:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.
Wednesday, March 18:
9:00 a.m. – 11:00 a.m., break: 30 min, 11:30 a.m. – 1:00 p.m., break: 60 min, 2:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.
Thursday, March 19:
9:00 a.m. – 11:00 a.m., break: 30 min, 11:30 a.m. – 1:00 p.m., break: 60 min, 2:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.
Venue: Leipzig University, ECO-N commons room, Hainstr. 11, 04109 Leipzig
The registration deadline is 4 March 2026 (capacity is limited).
To register, please send an e-mail to niedetzky@wifa.uni-leipzig.de // subject: Registration Resource Dynamics.
Format
- Two online meetings for preparatory assignments
- Three days with three two-hour interactive lectures.
The in-person lectures discuss the classic and frontier academic contributions at a graduate school level.
All students (also those not requiring a course grade) are expected to do the preparatory assignments before the course starts. These assignments are based on basic resource and environmental economics principles. They prepare for the more advanced material discussed in the in-person lectures. They are based on six short chapters from a book in preparation “Environmental and Resource Economics – A Concise Introduction” (Gerking and Smulders 2026, GS for short). The assignments will be discussed online on March 5 (Chapter 1,2,4,6) and March 12 (Chapter 7, 8).
Course grade
Based on preparatory assignments (30%) active participation during the interactive lectures (20%) and on a final project (50%). The assignment is due May 1, 2026.
Topics
This course deals with advanced topics in environmental and resource economics from an applied theory perspective, with an emphasis on dynamics and growth, applied to global environmental problems including climate change.
Central themes in the course are the dynamic aspects of environmental policy and the interaction between environmental policy and technological change. The course uses natural resource theory (to study the dynamics of resource use) and growth theory (to study the link with technology and the long-run general equilibrium effects).
We try to answer questions like the following:
- What is the optimal carbon tax?
- Should green technologies be subsidized?
- Should we mainly rely on carbon taxes or on green subsidies?
- When are growth and environmental improvement compatible?
- Will we grow out of pollution? What drives the Environmental Kuznets Curve?
- How can we measure sustainability?
- How can we include environmental degradation and resource scarcity in cost-benefit analysis and measurement of the wealth of nations?
In the course we will see a mix between “fundamental robust insights” and “new challenges in the literature”, so that the course might be interesting both for the student with a general interest in the field and for the student who plans to do (theoretical) research in the field.
Required background
The course employs standard mathematical tools like calculus, optimization, optimal control, phase diagrams, differential equations, and integration.
Course material
Available at dropbox folder
- Chapters and exercises for preparatory meetings
- Full reading list
- Time schedule
- Clarification about final assignment
Overview topics and timing
Preparatory meeting 1
a) Insights from environmental economics: Externalities, Efficiency, Instruments,
b) Insights from resource economics: Stock pollution
Preparatory meeting 2
a) non-renewable resources
b) renewable resources
c) growth
Day 1 Resource theory
a) Non-renewable resource scarcity
b) Circularity and critical raw resources
c) Biodiversity and Natural Capital
d) Sustainable development and Green accounting
Day 2 Environment and (limits to) growth
a) Macroeconomics and environment
b) Limits to growth
c) Pollution-GDP dynamics (and the Environmental Kuznets Curve)
d) Analytical climate/growth models
e) Natural disasters and growth
f) Degrowth debate
Day 3 Directed technical change
a) Canonical Directed Technical Change (DTC) models
b) Empirical Foundation
c) Climate policy applications of DTC models
e) Coordination failures, climate policy, and DTC