This paper discusses the recent changes in the market for catastrophe risk. These risks have traditionally been distributed through the insurance and reinsurance systems. However, because insurance companies tend to share relatively small amounts of their cat exposures and because insurance...

This paper discusses new challenges we face with terrorism as a catastrophic risk by focusing on risk assessment, risk management as well as risk financing issues. The special characteristics of terrorism compared with major natural hazards call for the development of public-private...

We survey the microeconomics literature that studies how firms in the developing world are adapting to extreme weather, local pollution, and natural disasters. Climate change increases the uncertainty that every firm must address as it decides where and how to produce and who to trade with. We...

This paper summarizes economic research on investment in public infrastructure and introduces the findings of several new studies on this topic. It begins with a review of several potential justifications for the public sector's involvement in building, financing, and operating infrastructure,...

It has become increasingly common to allocate highway franchises to the bidder that offers to charge the lowest toll. Often, building a highway increases the value of land held by a small group of developers, an effect that is more pronounced with lower tolls. We study the welfare implications...

Private financing of care can make universal entitlement to care more comprehensive' and complete.' The possible combination -- at the point of service provision -- of privately acquired entitlement with the public entitlement, can impinge, however, upon the goals (e.g. improved health, equity,...

We examine how the U.S. Federal Government governs R&D contracts with private-sector firms. The government chooses between two contractual forms: grants and cooperative agreements. The latter provides the government substantially greater discretion over, and monitoring of, project progress....