The paper proposes two axioms that capture the idea of sustainable development and derives the welfare criterion that they imply. The axioms require that neither the present nor the future should play a dictatorial role. Theorem 1 shows there exist sustainable preferences, which satisfy these...

Current changes in Latin America include the abandonment of the economic pattern of import substitution, a growing opening of the national economies, a continental wave of political democratization, an apparent economic recovery from the "lost decade" (the 1980s), a growing social polarization,...

An important problem in environmental economics arises from te irreversibility of consuming or destroying certain resources. Extractive resources like oil are a clear example. Even for environmental resources the same seems to be true in a number of environmental cases, for example biodiversity,...

Complexity theory is designed to bring order out of a rough-and- tumble world, something close to every insurance professional's or actuary's heart. Whether applied in the laboratory or as part of a mathematical model, it can do wonderful things . But in the real world it's just what its name...

It has been said that insurance is the last of the financial services to accept radical change (Denney [1995-1996]). Yet there has been a fundamental shift in the geographic location and in the organization of the reinsurance industry in the last six years (Chichilnisky [19966]). Global...

A conference report on UNESCO and Fundacion Bariloche sponsored conference with policy-oriented scientists from Africa, Europe, Latin America, and the United States of December 1976. The focus was on global modelling, its formalization and reliability. The applications were to problems of...

The property catastrophe reinsurance industry faces a major challenge. Since 1989, climatic volatility has produced unprecedented insured losses of $43 billion, $18 billion of which were from Hurricane Andrew alone. A surge of insurer defaults and dramatic changes in capacity and pricing have...

The present acceleration of environmental destruction can be linked to the economic trading strategies that came into vogue after World War II. The theory of comparative advantages of trade, which recommends that developing countries emphasize resource exports and exports of labor-intensive...

The concept of basic needs is today at the center of many discussions about development and the international order. Some international organizations are rethinking their prior evaluation of development policies based largely on aggregate economic output, in particular, the welfare of the very...

This chapter focusses on global environmental risks such as climate change, an issue that must be confronted as we move into the future. It proposes sound principles of risk management that make sense in today's society generally, going beyond their role of averting and hedging climate risks....