The BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill highlighted the glaring weakness in the current liability and regulatory regime for oil spills and for environmental catastrophes more broadly. This article proposes a new liability structure for deep sea oil drilling and for catastrophic risks generally. It...

The mad cow disease crisis in the United Kingdom (U.K.) was a major policy disaster. The government and public health officials failed to identify the risk to humans, created tremendous uncertainty regarding the human risks once they were identified, and undertook a series of policies that...

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) balances risks and benefits before approving pharmaceuticals, as rationality would require. But powerful behavioral biases that lead to the mishandling of uncertainty also influence its approval process. The FDA places inordinate emphasis on errors of...

Catastrophic risks differ in terms of their natural or human origins, their possible amplification by human behaviors, and the relationships between those who create the risks and those who suffer the losses. Given their disparate anatomies, catastrophic risks generally require tailored...

Over 250 respondents, graduate students in law and public policy, assessed the risks of climate change and valued climate-change mitigation policies. Many aspects of their behavior were consistent with rational behavior. For example, respondents successfully estimated distributions of...

Our survey results demonstrate that targeted screening of airline passengers raises conflicting concerns of efficiency and equity. Support for profiling increases if there is a substantial reduction in avoided delays to other passengers. The time cost and benefit components of targeting affect...