The Precautionary Principle has been proposed as the proper behaviour to adopt in the face of the new catastrophic risks that have made their appearance in the last decades. We advance a workable definition of the Precautionary Principle and apply it to the possible outbreak among humans of the...

We consider an aggregation scheme of opinions expressed through different probability distributions or multiple priors decision model. The decision-maker adopts entropy maximization as a measure of risk diversification and a rational form of prudence for valuing uncertain outcomes. We show a new...

The paper defines a consensus distribution with respect to experts’ opinions by a multiple quantile utility model. The paper points out that the Steiner Point is the representative consensus probability. The new rule of experts’ opinions aggregation, that can be evaluated by the Shapley...

This paper advances an intuitive way to represent Keynes’s notion of long-term expectation. The epsilon-contamination approach is introduced and a rational and coherent decision rule is derived. The result is evidence that Ellsberg and Keynes share the notion of uncertainty and adopt the same...

In many contexts, warning systems of law enforcement are used to let uninformed individuals learn what is illegal, while sanctions are applied only after a number of repeated violations. Surprisingly no em- pirical evidence is available so far, over the learning impact of warnings. This paper is...

Vector-borne diseases (VBDs) are widespread in less developed countries and re-emerging in developed ones. Available economic studies agree that VBDs induce significant effects on countries' economic outcomes, and affirm that a systematic evaluation of such effects is crucial to the efficient...

Background: During the global pandemic of N1H1 (2009) influenza, many Governments signed contracts with vaccine producers for a universal influenza immunization program and bought hundreds of millions of vaccines doses. We argue that, as Health Ministers assumed the occurrence of the worst...

This paper deals with the emergence of price stickiness, that is nominal price elasticity below one, in the wake of nominal shocks. The setting of analysis is a general equilibrium model with both ambiguity and rational expectations. Ambiguity and macroeconomics are linked exploiting a...

This paper attempts to outline the virtues and the perverse effects of a Demerit Point System (DPS). Under a DPS, once overcome a given threshold of demerit points, infringers are punished by severe non-monetary sanctions (such as the temporarily suspension of driving license in traffic...

This paper argues that Ellsberg’s and Shackle’s frameworks for discussing the limits of the (subjective) probabilistic approach to decision theory are not as different as they may appear. To stress the common elements in their theories Keynes’s Treatise on Probability provides an essential...