Lecture 1

Syllabus and Course Outline

Byeong-Hak Choe

bchoe@geneseo.edu

SUNY Geneseo

August 24, 2026

Instructor

Instructor

Current Appointment & Education

• Byeong-Hak Choe
• Assistant Professor of Data Analytics and Economics, School of Business at SUNY Geneseo
• Ph.D. in Economics, University of Wyoming
• M.S. in Economics, Arizona State University
• M.A. in Economics, SUNY Stony Brook
• B.A. in Economics and B.S. in Applied Mathematics, Hanyang University at Ansan, South Korea
  • Minor in Business Administration
  • Concentration in Finance

[Sources] - User-provided DANL 101 Lecture 1 reference deck (instructor biography).

Instructor

Economics and Natural Resources

Choe (2021), Social Media Campaigns, Lobbying and Legislation: Evidence from #climatechange and Energy Lobbies

• Question: How do public social-media campaigns and fossil-fuel lobbying shape climate legislation?
• The project connects public attention, political engagement, and firm-level lobbying activity.
• It illustrates a recurring theme in this course: environmental outcomes depend on incentives and institutions.

[Sources] - User-provided DANL 101 Lecture 1 reference deck (research title and summary).

Instructor

Economics and Natural Resources

Choe and Ore-Monago (2024), Governance and Climate Finance in the Developing World

• Climate finance supports efforts to reduce emissions and adapt to climate impacts.
• Question: When does international climate finance produce effective environmental outcomes?
• Governance, legal institutions, and accountability can shape whether funding achieves its purpose.

[Sources] - User-provided DANL 101 Lecture 1 reference deck (research title and summary).

Instructor

Economics and Data Science

Choe, B.H. and Newbold, Steve — Speed vs. Safety

The policy trade-off

• Higher travel speeds create time-saving benefits.
• They can also increase fatal-crash risk.
• The policy question is whether the time savings justify the safety costs.

VSL in benefit–cost analysis

\[ \begin{aligned} \text{Net benefits} &= \text{time benefits} - \text{safety costs},\\ \text{Safety costs} &= \Delta\text{ expected fatalities} \times \text{VSL}. \end{aligned} \]

• An established Value of a Statistical Life (VSL) converts mortality-risk changes into monetary terms.
• We apply VSL as an input; we do not estimate it.

[Sources] - User-provided correction: project title and the role of VSL in the analysis. - User-provided DANL 101 Lecture 1 reference deck (project framing and benefit–cost equations).

Instructor

Economics and Data Science

Choe, B.H. — Learning from Scalable Platform Monitoring: Evidence from Chess.com’s Proctor Rollout

• Setting: Titled Tuesday, Chess.com’s weekly cash-prize event for titled players.
• Rollout: Selective Zoom monitoring gradually gave way to scalable Proctor software.
• Question: How did participation and performance change as Proctor assignments expanded?
• Data: 469,953 games across 208 Early and Late sessions (2023–2025), linked to standings, pairings, ratings, and session assignment counts.

[Sources] - Current Chess.com Proctor research manuscript and README (project title, setting, monitoring change, research question, sample, and analytical caveats). - User-owned Titled Tuesday image from the DANL course-site assets.

Syllabus

Syllabus

Email, Class & Office Hours

• Email: bchoe@geneseo.edu
• Class: Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, 9:30–10:20 A.M.
• Classroom: Welles 131
• Course websites:
  • GitHub Course Website
  • Brightspace Course Shell
• Office: South Hall 227B
• Office hours:
  • Mondays and Wednesdays, 1:45–3:15 P.M. (walk-in)
  • By appointment via email when walk-in hours do not work

Syllabus

Official Course Description

The purpose of this course is to examine how economic analysis helps us understand the problems of natural resource management.

We will spend the first weeks of the course reviewing the relevant economic concepts and then apply these to problems associated with different natural resources, including depletable resources, energy, recyclable resources, water, land, forests, and fisheries.

We will also talk about ecosystem services and good. Special emphasis is devoted to analyzing the optimal role for public policy.

[Sources] - Official ECON 341 course description supplied by SUNY Geneseo and reproduced in the Fall 2026 syllabus.

Syllabus

Official Course Description

The major objectives are for students to:

1. learn basic economic principles governing the allocation of various categories of scarce natural/environmental resources among competing uses; and
2. gain experience with basic analytical tools useful for applying these principles to real world allocation problems.

[Sources] - Official ECON 341 course description supplied by SUNY Geneseo and reproduced in the Fall 2026 syllabus.

Syllabus

Course Learning Outcomes

• Understand stocks, flows, dynamic efficiency, and Hotelling’s rule.
• Apply externalities, property rights, and market-failure analysis.
• Use stated- and revealed-preference methods to value nonmarket resources.
• Analyze fisheries, forests, aquifers, and other common-pool resources.
• Evaluate disaster risk, insurance-market failure, and resilience investment.

Syllabus

Required Textbook & Course Access

• Required textbook: Tietenberg and Lewis, Natural Resource Economics: The Essentials, 2nd edition
  • ISBN-13: 978-1-032-68908-1
  • The course schedule abbreviates the textbook as TL.
  • TL Chapter 1 is not assigned.
• Course website: weekly roadmaps, lecture slides, Classwork, homework, project guides, and exam guides
• Brightspace: announcements, submission links, grades, and feedback

[Sources] - Routledge, Natural Resource Economics: The Essentials, 2nd edition.

Syllabus

Course Requirements

• Homework: Five assignments
• Quiz: One in-class quiz
• Classwork: In-person activities integrated with class meetings
• Participation: In-class and online participation
• Exams: One midterm exam and one comprehensive final exam
• Group Project: Managing a Resource Under Pressure, with a group presentation and proposal

Syllabus

Group Project: Managing a Resource Under Pressure

Each group will:

• select a specific natural resource system under pressure;
• identify the market failure or governance problem;
• apply at least one economic framework from the course;
• compare the trade-offs among policy options; and
• present a clear, evidence-based recommendation.

The proposal may be theoretical, empirical, or a combination of both.

Syllabus

Group Project: Proposal Expectations

Your group’s proposal should:

1. explain the central economic problem;
2. identify the market failure or governance challenge;
3. present appropriate evidence;
4. evaluate the competing interests and policy trade-offs; and
5. formulate recommendations that follow from the analysis.

Any change in group membership or research topic requires instructor approval.

Syllabus

Course Contents

Week	Contents	Milestone
1	Syllabus and course outline; microeconomics review	First meeting
2	Externalities, welfare, and corrective policy
3	Property rights, Coase, public goods, and open access	Labor Day
4	Benefit-cost analysis, discounting, and dynamic efficiency
5	Depletable resources, scarcity rent, and energy transition
6	Valuation I: total economic value and stated preference

Syllabus

Course Contents

Week	Contents	Milestone
7	Valuation II: travel cost, hedonic pricing, and benefit transfer
8	Ecosystem services, natural capital, and biodiversity	Fall Break; quiz
9	Fisheries, biological growth, and community governance	Midterm
10	Forest rotation, carbon, and fire	Project kickoff
11	Land, location, habitat, and scarce-water allocation

Syllabus

Course Contents

Week	Contents	Milestone
12	Natural-disaster economics, climate risk, and resilience
13	Disaster insurance, moral hazard, and affordability
14	Sustainable development and intergenerational trade-offs	Thanksgiving
15	Sustainability policy studio and group presentations	Presentations
16	Group presentations and course synthesis	Final exam

Syllabus

No Classes

• Monday, September 7: Labor Day
• Monday, October 12: Fall Break
• Wednesday, November 25 and Friday, November 27: Thanksgiving Break

The official course calendar and weekly roadmaps reflect these shortened weeks.

Syllabus

Major Assessment Dates

• October 16: Quiz
• October 19: Midterm exam
• October 30: Project kickoff report
• December 2–7: Group presentations
• December 9, 8:30–10:30 A.M.: Final exam
• December 15, 11:59 P.M.: Project proposal

Homework due dates are listed in the syllabus, weekly roadmaps, and Brightspace.

Syllabus

Grading

\[ \begin{aligned} \text{Total Percentage Score} = {}&0.05(\text{Attendance})\\ &+0.05(\text{Quiz \& Participation})\\ &+0.20(\text{Homework})\\ &+0.20(\text{Group Project})\\ &+0.50(\text{Exams}). \end{aligned} \]

Syllabus

Grading: Attendance & Homework

• Up to six absences are allowed without penalty.
• Additional absences may affect the grade unless formally excused.
• Contact the instructor about illness, emergencies, transportation problems, or another excused reason.
• The single lowest homework score is dropped when the homework component is calculated.
• Classwork that depends on an in-class activity cannot always be recreated outside class.

Syllabus

Grading: Exams

• The course has one midterm exam and one comprehensive final exam.
• The midterm is scheduled for Monday, October 19.
• The final is scheduled for Wednesday, December 9, 8:30–10:30 A.M.
• Exams account for 50% of the Total Percentage Score.

Syllabus

Grading: Total Exam Score

\[ \text{Total Exam Score} =0.30\times(\text{Midterm Exam Score}) +0.70\times(\text{Final Exam Score}). \]

• The midterm contributes 30% of the exam component.
• The comprehensive final contributes 70% of the exam component.

Syllabus

Grading: Group Project

\[ \begin{aligned} \text{Group Project Score} = {}&0.05\times(\text{Peer Evaluation})\\ &+0.10\times(\text{Project Kickoff Report})\\ &+0.65\times(\text{Presentation})\\ &+0.20\times(\text{Proposal}). \end{aligned} \]

Syllabus

Make-up Policy

• Make-up exams require a medically verified excuse or a University-excused absence.
• For religious obligations, contact the instructor at least two weeks in advance to arrange an alternative time.
• A missed exam without an excused absence earns a zero.
• Late or missed assignments follow the policy stated in the syllabus or assignment instructions.

Syllabus

Academic Integrity and Plagiarism

• Homework and exams must be your original work.
• Academic dishonesty includes:
  • representing another person’s work, thoughts, or ideas as your own;
  • allowing someone else to represent your work as theirs; and
  • knowingly participating in or concealing academic dishonesty.
• Ask for help with paraphrasing, quotation, and citation before submitting work.

Syllabus

Artificial Intelligence (AI) Policy

• Unless an assignment explicitly permits AI, complete the work independently.
• When AI is permitted, you remain responsible for the accuracy, reasoning, and final submission.
• You must document:
  • the AI platforms and tools used;
  • your prompts and relevant outputs; and
  • how you evaluated the output and what you learned.
• If a use is unclear, ask before using the tool.

Syllabus

Accessibility & Student Support

• The Office of Accessibility coordinates reasonable accommodations and equal access.
• Students with approved accommodations should submit a semester request.
• If health, basic needs, or personal circumstances affect your learning, contact the instructor or the Dean of Students.
• Free, confidential counseling and other student-support resources are available through SUNY Geneseo.

Office of Accessibility Services · Erwin Hall 22 · 585-245-5112 · access@geneseo.edu

Syllabus

Before the Next Class

1. Read the full syllabus.
2. Open the course website and Brightspace.
3. Record the midterm, final, and project dates.
4. Bring a calculator or device for the microeconomics review.
5. Be ready to work with demand, supply, equilibrium, and surplus.

Next: a concise microeconomics toolkit for natural resource allocation.