2025 (Current Year) Faculty Courses School of Environment and Society Undergraduate major in Transdisciplinary Science and Engineering

Principles of Economics for Environment and Society

Academic unit or major: Undergraduate major in Transdisciplinary Science and Engineering
Instructor(s): Naoya Abe
Class Format: Lecture (Face-to-face)
Media-enhanced courses: -
Day of week/Period (Classrooms): 3-4 Tue (石川台4号館B03-B04-B05) / 3-4 Fri (石川台4号館B03-B04-B05)
Class: -
Course Code: TSE.C302
Number of credits: 200
Course offered: 2025
Offered quarter: 3Q
Syllabus updated: Sep 29, 2025
Language: English

Syllabus

Course overview and goals

This course provides foundational knowledge in applying economics to understand the social, economic, and environmental challenges facing contemporary international society.

The primary objective of this course is to enable students to apply economic theory and knowledge to formulate questions about desirable societal and environmental conditions. To achieve this, through lectures and discussions on themes such as the fundamentals of microeconomics, the concept of “development” as a key framework for understanding social and economic activities, concepts of poverty and inequality, the fundamentals of environmental and resource economics, the relationship between environment and development, the roles of the state, markets, and communities, and international trade, students will aim to acquire the foundational knowledge and perspectives necessary to consider desirable societies and environments.

Course description and aims

At the end of this course, students will be able to:

1) explain the basic background of today's asocial and environmental issues, which are reported and discussed by various media and on Internet. At the same time, understand the pros and cons of economic approach.

2) discuss today's international and globalized issues

3) raise a fundamental question about the significance of his/her own study as well as about an ideal state of our society, where there is no single and correct answer.

Keywords

Applied Economics, Microeconomics, Sustainable Development, Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

Competencies

Specialist skills
Intercultural skills
Communication skills
Critical thinking skills
Practical and/or problem-solving skills

Class flow

This course will consist of lectures with discussions and active participation by studnets is highly encouraged. There will be what the instructor called "weekly visual reports" assignment, where each student is requested to take a photo of a subject, which is related to the content of lecture in a week and to discuss why the subject is taken and how the subject is related to the lecture for better understanding of each lecture.

Course schedule/Objectives

	Course schedule	Objectives
Class 1	Orientation to this course + discussion about of "better life, better society and better planet"	Be able to argue the challenges and goals of "better life, society and planet" from multiple perspectives.
Class 2	Defining developing countries and the frameworks to measure how they are	Be able to explain the basic logic of consumer theory in microeconomics.
Class 3	Traditional Measurement of Wealth of Nations and its limitation	Be able to explain the definition of basic economic indicators and indices such as GDP or HDI.
Class 4	Classic Economic Growth Theories	Be able to explain the logic of the classic economic growth theories.
Class 5	Poverty, Inequality and Development	Be able to explain the definitions and notions of poverty and inequality in the context of "development"
Class 6	Population Growth, Migration and Urbanization Market Failure and Environmental Issues	Be able to explain the background of population growth, migration and Urbanization and their impact
Class 7	Public Health, Education and Human Capital Public Goods, CPR, Club Goods	Be able to explain the importance of public health, education and human capital.
Class 8	Transformation of agriculture, food supply and demand, food insecurity	Be able to explain the transformation of agriculture, food supply and demand, food insecurity.
Class 9	Environmental issues and market failure	Be able to explain environmental issues as an example of market failure.development
Class 10	Public Goods, CPR, Club Goods	Be able to explain the definitions of Public Goods, CPR and Club Goods in terms of Rivalry and excludability.
Class 11	Roles of state, market and civic society	Be able to explain the roles of states, markets and civic society
Class 12	International Trade	Be able to explain the basic theory of international trade.
Class 13	Balance of Payments	Be able to explain the basic framework of Balance of Payments.
Class 14	Summary of this course: reflection on the previous sessions	Be able to explain the purpose of this course as well as what is studied,development

Study advice (preparation and review)

To enhance effective learning, students are encouraged to spend approximately 100 minutes preparing for class and another 100 minutes reviewing class content afterwards (including assignments) for each class.
They should do so by referring to textbooks and other course material.

Textbook(s)

None (explained in lecture materials). References will be provided as needed.

Reference books, course materials, etc.

Hayami (2000), Development Economics, Sobunsha
World Development Reports, the World Bank (various years)
Human Development Reports, UNDP (various years)
Todaro & Smith (2011) Development Economics, Addison Wesley

(New editions are available too)

Evaluation methods and criteria

Weekly Report (70%)
Final Report (30%)

Related courses

TSE.C301 ： Introduction to International Development

Prerequisites

None

Other

Course content may change subject to the progress of the lectures.