ENRE Ph.D. Opportunities

The environmental economics faculty at Yale F&ES accept a limited number of students each year as part of the Yale F&ES doctoral program, which is conferred through the Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.  For full details on the Yale F&ES Ph.D. program, please see the doctoral program website.
 
The general guidelines for classes and advancement to candidacy for the Yale F&ES doctoral program apply to all Ph.D. students at F&ES.  These guidelines are stated in the doctoral program handbook.
 
For students focusing on environmental economics at F&ES, a primary objective is a rigorous foundation in economics.  Our close relationship with the Economics Department at Yale allows students in F&ES to take first-year theory classes and traditional field courses alongside the Economics doctoral students.  For a specialized treatment of environmental and natural resource economics, students have a choice of courses offered by F&ES faculty including the theory of environmental and natural resource economics, valuing the environment, green markets, and environment and development.
 
Depending on their research interests, environmental economics students also have the opportunity to take classes across a variety of fields within F&ES including climate and atmospheric sciences, ecosystem ecology, forestry, hydrology, remote sensing, and spatial statistics.  A full list of courses offered by F&ES can be found in the links at the bottom of the page.  Students are encouraged to engage in cutting-edge interdisciplinary research as early as their second year. The small size of the group also assures personal hands-on training.           
 
Although each student should consult with his/her advisor, a typical sequence of courses for environmental economics students in the F&ES doctoral program is as follows:
 
First Year (Fall Semester):

  • Microeconomic Theory I (ECON 500a)
  • Econometrics I (ECON 550a)
  • Doctoral Student Seminar (F&ES 900a)

First Year (Spring Semester):

  • Microeconomic Theory II (ECON 501b)
  • Econometrics II (ECON 551b)
  • One F&ES Environmental Economics Course:
    • Valuing the Environment (F&ES 802b)
    • Green Markets: Voluntary and Information Based Approaches to Environmental Management (F&ES 803b)
    • Agriculture and the Environment (F&ES 810b)
    • Environment and Development: An Economic Approach (F&ES 811b)

Second Year (3 or 4 of the following classes per semester).  This list is not exhaustive, but rather a sample of courses taken by recent students:

  • Our Ph.D. Environmental Economics Course Sequence (expected of all students): Ph.D. Environmental and Natural Resource Economics (F&ES 904a) and Ph.D. Environmental & Energy Economics (F&ES 905b)
  • Economic Field Courses: Advanced Microeconomic Theory, Applied Econometrics, Development, Econometrics III – V, Industrial Organization, International Trade, Labor, Macroeconomic Theory, Public Finance (for a course listing with numbers and descriptions, see the link below) 
  • Research specific coursework: Applied Spatial Statistics (F&ES 781b), Climate and Air Pollution Seminar (F&ES 705b), Environmental Hydrology (F&ES 714b), Modeling Geographic Space (F&ES 755b), Optimization (ENAS 525), Remote Sensing of Land Cover and Land Use Change (F&ES 725a), Remote Sensing of the Earth from Space (F&ES 726b)
  • Independent Research

Third Year and Beyond:  Additional classes may be taken as needed, but most students are actively working on their dissertation at this stage.
 
Note for new students:  New students are encouraged to take the 3 week Math Camp course offered by the Economics Department in August.  The class, not offered for credit, covers the fundamental mathematics required in the first-year theory classes. 
 
Links:
Current YSE courses
Yale Economics Graduate courses