Prior research has estimated intergenerational time preferences by asking respondents to choose between hypothetical life saving programs. From such choices, researchers have concluded that the public heavily discounts the lives of people in future generations. However, using a multiversion...

This paper extends the classic expected utility theory analysis of optimal insurance contracting to the case where the insurer has a positive probability of total default and the buyer and insurer have divergent beliefs about this probability. The optimal marginal indemnity above the deductible...

In November 2001, a nationally representative sample of Americans (N = 973, ages 13-88), queried via WebTVs at home, judged the probability of five terror-related events (e.g., being injured in an attack) and three "routine" risks (e.g., being a victim of other violent crime), in the following...

A substantial literature over the past thirty years has evaluated tradeoffs between money and fatality risks. These values in turn serve as estimates of the value of a statistical life. This article reviews more than 60 studies of mortality risk premiums from ten countries and approximately 40...

Previous research has established an association between air pollution and adult mortality. However, studies utilizing short-term fluctuations in pollution may detect mortality changes among the already ill or dying, while prospective cohort studies, which utilize geographic differences in...

We examine the incidence, form, and research consequences of measurement error in measures of fatal injury risk in U.S. workplaces using both Bureau of Labor Statistics and National Intitute of Occupational Safety and Health data. Of the various measures examined the NIOSH industry risk measure...

We draw on an ecological metaphor to analyze terror defense by governments and individuals. Governments can combat terror in part by targeting what we call the "stock of terror capacity" accumulated by a terrorist organization. The optimal control of terror stocks relies on both periodic cleanup...

The terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center caused unprecedented economic and structural ramifications in the insurance markets, resulting in considerable uncertainty and informational asymmetry. We test several theoretical models of how markets respond to and recover from extreme capital...

The Precautionary Principle has provided the foundations for building a new risk regulatory pattern under scientific uncertainty. This paper investigates how classical economic theory may, or may not, justify the Precautionary Principle. It examines the link between irreversibility, the prospect...