ACE8015: ENVIRONMENTAL & RURAL RESOURCE ECONOMICS

Examination Questions

(as moderated by the External Examiner, Dec, 2007)

You will be asked to write an answer to one of these questions during a closed book two hour University examination in January 2007. You are invited to think about your answers beforehand, and to submit drafts for my comment and appraisal (but not assessment) prior to the examination.

1. You have been commissioned to write a briefing paper for a new Chief Executive of a Regional Development Agency on the major economic problems of rural development. The person you are writing this paper for is a trained economist, but is not familiar with the specific problems of either rural areas or of rural development. Outline and justify the paper you would prepare. [You may base the paper on a specific region, but you should not spend much time or space describing the region, other than to illustrate how the specific characteristics colour your analysis of the major economic problems.]

2. ‘Sustainability is fashionable as the crucial concept for rural development and resource management’. Write a critical assessment of this statement, paying particular attention to the issues and problems associated with the concept. Identify the insights that the concept provides for practical management and policy design.

3. Why might government intervention be necessary to improve the management and use of rural resources? How does economics help to understand these issues, and what particular problems do you think arise from an economic approach to the problems?

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