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Economics and Management

Administered by the Department of Forestry and Environmental Resources

Economics and Management option graduate students study the trade-offs associated with how society interacts with natural resources in order to assess and improve natural resource policy and management. Students focus on trade-offs at many different spatial and temporal scales. Examples include non-market valuation of ecosystem services, optimal management of forest stands with changing climate, carbon and market consequences of using biomass energy, sustainable development and long-term projections of ecological and economic sustainability.

Job Opportunities

Persons graduating from this discipline have obtained employment with state and federal natural resource agencies, private consulting firms, non-governmental conservation organizations, and forest management organizations. Many students continue studies at the PhD level.

Faculty Contacts

Prerequisites

A Bachelor of Science or Bachelor of Arts degree is required. Students without a background in natural resources or a related field may be required to take up to 12 credit hours of undergraduate course work. Students without a background in intermediate microeconomics may need to take an additional undergraduate course in economics as a prerequisite for courses listed in the technical option core curriculum.

Curriculum

Master of Natural Resources Core Curriculum (required)

CourseDescriptionCredit Hours
NR 500Natural Resource Management3
NR 571Current Issues in Natural Resource Policy3
ST 5**A graduate level statistics course3
FOR 801FER Graduate Seminar (or equivalent seminar course)1
FOR 803Research Methods (FER graduate students only)1
 Total Credit Hours11

Technical Option Core Curriculum

Students are required to take 9 credits in natural resource economics or management. Courses can be taken from the list below, or others may be substituted with approval of the advising committee.

NC State
CourseDescriptionCredit Hours
ECG (ARE) 436Environmental Economics3
ECG 505Applied Microeconomic Analysis3
ECG 512Law and Economics3
ECG 515Environmental and Resource Policy3
ECG 540Economic Development3
ECG 548International Economics3
ECG (ST) 561Intermediate Econometrics3
ECG 700Fundamentals of Microeconomics3
PA 511Public Policy Analysis3
PA 550Environmental Policy3
OR 501Introduction to Operations Research3
OR 505Introduction to Linear Programming3
BMA 567Modeling Biological Systems4
FOR 505Forest Management4
FOR 509Forest Policy1
GIS 520Spatial Problem Solving3
FOR 734Advanced Forest Management Planning (prerequisite of FOR 505, OR 501 or higher)3
ST 708Applied Least Squares3
ST 732Applied Longitudianal Data Analysis3
ST 733Applied Spatial Statistics3
Based on student interest, special topics courses (595) with variable credit hours are offered at NCSU including:
Non-market Valuation
Risk Assessment
Pine Plantation Management
Survey Methods
UNC-Chapel Hill
Course Description Credit Hours PLCY 717 Institutional Analysis for Public Policy 3 PLCY 895 Institutional Analysis for Public Policy 3 ECON 785 Theory of Environmental Policy: Taxes & Permits 3 ENVR 685 Water & Sanitation Planning and Policy in Developing Countries 3 ENVR 785 Public Investment Theory 3
DUKE
CourseDescriptionCredit Hours
Environ 711Energy and the Environment3
Environ 752Sustainability and Renewable Resource Economics3
Environ 538Global Environmental Health: Economics & Policy3
Environ 520Resource and Environmental Economics3
Environ 520DEconomic Analysis of Res & Environmental Policies3
Environ 521Resource and Environmental Economics II3
Environ 563Economic Analysis & Evaluation for Public Health and Environment3
Environ 640Climate Change Economics & Policy3
Environ 680Economics of Forest Resources3
Environ 850Program Evaluations of Environmental Policies3
Environ 832Environmental Decision Analysis3
PPS 580SWater Cooperation & Conflict3
Based on student interest, special topic courses with variable credit hours are offered at Duke (ENVIRON, PUBPOL) and UNC (ENVR, PLAN)
 Total Credit Hours9

Additional Courses/ Requirements

  • 10 additional credits of selected courses are required as selected in cooperation with the student’s advisor and advisory committee, which may include:
  • NR 695 Master’s Thesis Research or
    NR 693 Master’s Supervised Research (up to 6 credit hours)

Students who do not have a background in natural resources or a related field may be required to take up to 12 credit hours of undergraduate course work that cannot be counted towards the MNR degree program, but this is seldom required.

Total Credit Hours:  30 Credit Hours

Projects

Recent Project Titles

Links/ Additional Information

Department of Forestry and Environmental Resources Prospective Graduate Students website