The crises of both the climate and the biosphere are manifestations of the imbalance between human extractive, and polluting activities and the Earth's regenerative capacity. Planetary boundaries define limits for biophysical systems and processes that regulate the stability and life support...

In some applications to human beings, the precautionary principle seems to raise specific ethical concerns. For instance, it has been used to exclude men who have sexual relations with men from donating blood on the basis of a higher HIV prevalence in this group. Does not the precautionary...

In some applications to human beings, the precautionary principle seems to raise specific ethical concerns. For instance, it has been used to exclude men who have sexual relations with men from donating blood on the basis of a higher HIV prevalence in this group. Does not the precautionary...

Experts often disagree. A decision-maker may be averse to such expert disagreement. Existing models of aversion to expert disagreement rest on ambiguity-averse preferences adopting a unanimity principle: If all experts consider one choice better than another, so should the decision-maker. Such...

This article investigates the genesis and role of the 2° target in international climate policy. We identify a dual role played by temperature targets: (i) a social planner's option of decision making under uncertainty that draws on the precautionary principle, and (ii) a policy instrument to...

Experts often disagree. A decision-maker may be averse to such expert disagreement. Existing models of aversion to expert disagreement rest on ambiguity-averse preferences adopting a unanimity principle: If all experts consider one choice better than another, so should the decision-maker. Such...

Dieser Artikel dokumentiert ein Kurzinterview und einen Nachtrag. Das Interview beantwortet Fragen zur Corona-Pandemie, die mir vom Deutschen Netzwerk Wirtschaftsethik (DNWE) vorgelegt wurden. Der Nachtrag reflektiert auf ordonomische Publikationen, die während dieser Krisenzeit entstanden sind.

The theory of the precautionary principle has developed. In its implementation, the precautionary principle is used to deal with hazards in the environmental fields and has been widely used in health and food technology. In general, the precautionary principle is understood as making decisions...

Dieser Artikel dokumentiert ein Kurzinterview und einen Nachtrag. Das Interview beantwortet Fragen zur Corona-Pandemie, die mir vom Deutschen Netzwerk Wirtschaftsethik (DNWE) vorgelegt wurden. Der Nachtrag reflektiert auf ordonomische Publikationen, die während dieser Krisenzeit entstanden sind.

A crisis or depression, one significant unfortunate event, often happens without warning or preparation and cannot be ignored. Likewise, the threat of a financial crisis is a risk that concerns dangers in a state's economic and political stability. A financial crisis may cause a market and...

"Die Energiewende ist ein viel diskutiertes Thema im Bundestag - doch bleibt dabei auch der eigentliche Anspruch eines Transformationsprojekts bestehen? Andrea Amri-Henkel greift diese Frage in ihrer Diskursanalyse der Bundestagsdebatten von 1998 bis 2017 auf. Dazu entwickelt sie ein innovatives...

The precautionary principle has been an important aspect of regulatory delivery for nearly four decades. Now widely applied and with a global reach, the principle is often invoked whenever the scientific evidence surrounding the safety of a given technology is not conclusive. It is often applied...

Defence in depth is a time-tested strategy in some technical fields, such as cybersecurity or nuclear reactor technology. In view of potentially devasting consequences of exponential growth, the implementation of such a strategy is almost self-evident in this case. Less obvious is a formal...

Cost risk analysis (CRA) is currently emerging as a noticed decision-analytic framework within the field of climate economics. It combines the expected utility-based structure of cost benefit analysis (CBA) with the target-based approach of cost effectiveness analysis (CEA). As such, it offers a...

COVID-19 is a matter of common European interest since its very first detection on the continent. Yet this pandemic outbreak has largely been handled as an essentially national matter. This article makes a first attempt at unpacking how such fragmented, uncoordinated national responses to...

The COVID-19 outbreak offers a rich case study of government’s emergency response. As such, it is a test bed for risk research and regulatory theories in a world increasingly shaped by transboundary, uncertain manufactured and natural risks.This introductory essay to the special issue of the...

The European response to COVID-19 has revealed an inconvenient truth. Despite having integrated public health concerns across all its policies – be it agriculture, consumer protection, or security –, the Union cannot directly act to save people’s lives. Only member states can do so. Yet...

This paper studies the impacts of an environmental bond, which fully covers waste cleanup costs, on a mining firm's optimal actions over the full life cycle of a mine, when bankruptcy may shift cleanup costs to the government. A firm's stochastic optimal control problem is described by an HJB...

The EU is making progress in reducing its carbon footprint. The creation of a High-Level Group on Sustainable Finance has supplemented recent market-led initiatives and provided some recommendations for future reform. This article argues that more remains to be achieved. In particular, in light...

The literature on environmental law and policy tends to emphasise conceptual contradictions between the precautionary principle and cost-benefit analysis. This article argues that, though some theoretical inconsistencies have taken place, there is no significant contradictions between them. On...

The precautionary principle lies at the heart of the institutional architecture of EU risk regulation; EU institutions are fully entitled to take the precautionary principle and its overarching tenets into due consideration when enacting risk management measures. This article analyses judicial...

"In recent decades, the intensification of unpredictable events including the Covid-19 outbreak, Brexit, trade warfare, religion-inspired terrorism and civil wars, and climate change has resulted in serious loss of human lives and property, a decrease in biodiversity and natural hazards (with...

This Article frames the precautionary principle as an inner limit to the EU institutions’ broad discretion in the field of EU risk regulation, contextualizing recourse to the principle against the more encompassing backdrop of socially acceptable risk approaches. On these grounds, it inquires...

"Die Energiewende ist ein viel diskutiertes Thema im Bundestag - doch bleibt dabei auch der eigentliche Anspruch eines Transformationsprojekts bestehen? Andrea Amri-Henkel greift diese Frage in ihrer Diskursanalyse der Bundestagsdebatten von 1998 bis 2017 auf. Dazu entwickelt sie ein innovatives...

Since the 1990s, agri-biotech multinationals have introduced a radical innovation in the form of seeds derived from genetically modified plant varieties or GMVs. However, on the basis of the ‘precautionary principle' that advocates ensuring a higher environmental protection through...