Sensitivity (proportionality) of willingness to pay to (small) risk changes is often used as a criterion to test for valid measures of economic preferences. In a contingent valuation (CV) study conducted in Austria in February 2005 1,005 respondents were asked their willingness to pay (WTP) for...

We use data from a survey of residents of five Italian cities conducted in late Spring 2004 to estimate the discount rates implicit in (a) money v. future risk reductions and (b) money v. money tradeoffs. We find that the mean personal discount rate is 2% in (a) and 8.7% in (b). The latter is...

We use a panel dataset of UK workers to look for evidence of compensating wage differentials for workplace risk. Risk data are available at the four-digit industry level or at the three-digit occupation level. We discuss various econometric problems associated with the hedonic wage approach,...

This paper examines factors that may influence the estimates of the Value of a Statistical Life obtained from contingent valuation surveys that elicit the willingness to pay (WTP) for mortality risk reductions. We examine the importance of distributional assumptions, the choice of the welfare...

In this paper the climate change effect is an unforeseen earth temperature level above which a negative externality on technology and hence on society's welfare is exerted. We use a dynamic overlapping generations model to develop a positive analysis of the growth path of an economy with the...

The purpose of this paper is to provide a non-technical exposition of the main conclusions of the theory of Rational Belief Equilibrium (RBE) for market volatility. It is argued that the theory of Rational Belief Equilibria (RBE) provides a unified paradigm for explaining market volatility by...

We discuss the selection of the socially optimal discount rate for public investment projects that entail costs and benefits in the very long run. More specifically, we examine in an expected utility framework how the uncertainty on the growth rate of the GNP per head affects this rate. Under...

The behaviour of future policy-makers substantially influences future greenhouse gas emissions. Uncertainty about the motives of future policy-makers may thus strongly influence the climate policy strategies of current policy-makers. Analytical and numerical analyses in this paper confirm this...

In a dynamic model of a risk-neutral competitive firm which can lower its pollution emissions per unit of output by building up abatement capital stock, we examine the effect of a higher pollution tax rate on abatement investment both under full certainty and when the timing or the size of the...

We compare taxes and quotas when firms and the regulator have asymmetric information about abatement costs. Damages are caused by a stock pollutant. Uncertainty enters multiplicatively, i.e. it affects the slope rather than the intercept of abatement costs. We calibrate the model using cost and...