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

• Deconstruct the linear “take-make-dispose” model using thermodynamic and ecological economic principles.
• Evaluate circular business models (e.g., Product-Service Systems) using intermediate microeconomic firm theory and transaction cost economics.
• Apply quantitative statistical and accounting tools, such as Material Flow Analysis (MFA) and Life Cycle Costing (LCC), to resource loops.
• Critique macroeconomic growth models and design optimal environmental policy instruments (taxes, permits, mandates) to incentivise circularity.

Part I: Ecological & Microeconomic Foundations (Weeks 1–4)

Week 1: Paradigms of Production: Linear vs. Circular Economics

• Topics: Historical evolution of resource economics; the “Cowboy Economy” vs. “Spaceship Earth”; definitions, barriers, and enablers of the circular transition.
• Economics Focus: Shifting from open-loop utility maximization to closed-loop constrained optimization.

Week 2: Biophysical Economics, Thermodynamics, and Decoupling

• Topics: The First and Second Laws of Thermodynamics applied to economic systems; material and energy throughput; absolute vs. relative decoupling.
• Economics Focus: Incorporating entropy into production functions; physical boundaries of economic growth.

Week 3: Market Failures, Externalities, and Resource Economics

• Topics: Negative externalities of waste; public goods (assimilative capacity of nature); Hotelling’s Rule for non-renewable resource depletion.
• Economics Focus: Internalizing disposal costs; Pigouvian taxes vs. Coasean property rights in a circular framework.

Week 4: Value Retention Options: The 10R Hierarchy

• Topics: Refuse, Rethink, Reduce, Reuse, Repair, Refurbish, Remanufacture, Repurpose, Recycle, Recover.
• Economics Focus: Marginal cost of recycling vs. marginal cost of virgin resource extraction; elasticity of substitution between raw and secondary materials.

Part II: Microeconomics of the Firm, Consumer Behavior & Technical Tools (Weeks 5–8)

Week 5: Firm Behavior under Circularity: Product-Service Systems (PSS)

• Topics: Shifting from selling goods to selling services (e.g., leasing models); Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR); Eco-design incentives.
• Economics Focus: Principal-agent problems, asymmetric information regarding product durability, and asset depreciation management.

Week 6: Consumer Behavior and the Circular Rebound Effect

• Topics: Consumer acceptance of refurbished goods; collaborative consumption and sharing platforms; the circular rebound effect (where efficiency gains drop prices and boost overall consumption).
• Economics Focus: Income and substitution effects; behavioral economics nudges; choice architecture in waste segregation.

Week 7: Industrial Ecology and Industrial Symbiosis

• Topics: Waste-to-resource networks; eco-industrial parks (e.g., Kalundborg); transaction cost economics in localized byproduct exchanges.
• Economics Focus: Coase theorem applied to industrial waste; clustering and agglomeration economies.

Week 8: Quantitative Tools: Material Flow Analysis (MFA) & Life Cycle Costing (LCC)

• Topics: Introduction to physical accounting; tracing material stocks and flows across economic boundaries.
• Economics Focus: Utilizing your statistics/math background to apply the law of conservation of mass to economic accounting:

Part III: Macroeconomics, Policy, and Global Supply Chains (Weeks 9–12)

Week 9: Macroeconomics of the Transition: Green Industrial Policy

• Topics: Structural transformations; employment shifts in a repair-and-remanufacture economy; Green Growth vs. Post-Growth/Degrowth debates.
• Economics Focus: Modifying macroeconomic growth models to account for finite resource pools and capital recycling.

Week 10: Environmental Policy Instruments & Green Public Procurement

• Topics: Command-and-control regulations vs. market-based instruments; deposit-refund systems; green criteria in public tenders.
• Economics Focus: Comparative efficiency of policy tools under uncertainty; deadweight loss minimisation.

Week 11: The Circular Bioeconomy and Cascade Valorisation

• Topics: Biological cycles; organic waste streams; biorefineries; transforming agro-industrial waste into secondary revenue products.
• Economics Focus: Multi-product production functions; opportunity cost analysis between biological recycling and bioenergy generation.

Week 12: The Global Political Economy of Circularity & Critical Raw Materials

• Topics: Transboundary waste trade; resource nationalism; geopolitics of rare earth elements and lithium-ion battery supply chains.

Economics Focus: International trade theory (Heckscher-Ohlin model) augmented with resource and waste endowments; global value chain governance.

Lectures (3 hours/week)

Activity	Semester workload
Lectures, 3 hours per week	13Χ3 = 39 hours
Reading	111 hours
Total number of hours for the Course (25 hours of work-load per ECTS credit)	150 hours

The final grade for the course is based 100% on the student’s performance on a multiple choice final exam.

Use of ICTs in teaching and communication with the students (e-class)