We analyze factors in states' decisions to switch their approaches to hazardous waste liability policy from negligence standards to policies based on strict liability. Many, but not all, states have switched in recent years. We explain differences in the timing of states' adoption of strict...

The literature argues that if injurers cannot anticipate the precise level of harm, courts might use expected harm as a magnitude of compensation instead of actual harm without distorting care incentives. This paper shows that the use of expected harm is in fact preferable if victims choose the...

Recent changes in the U.S. liability regime for oil pollution damage are precipitating a potential insurance crisis for oil carriers operating in U.S. waters. While liability rules can be useful in causing the oil transport industry to internalize the costs of oil pollution, unlimited liability...

Financial responsibility rules are an increasingly common form of environmental regulation. Currently, the operators of landfills, underground petroleum storage tanks, offshore rigs, and oil tankers must demonstrate the existence of adequate levels of capital as a precondition to the legal...

It is becoming increasingly clear, at least on a theoretical level, that modelers of the potential impacts of climate change must impose that change upon the world as it will be configured sometime in the future rather than confine their attention to considerations of what would happen to the...

Concentrations of environmental pollutants tend to follow positively skewed frequency distributions. Two such density functions are the gamma and lognormal. Minimum variance unbiased estimators of the expected value for both densities are available. The small sample statistical properties of...

In July 1989, President Bush directed the Secretary of Energy to initiate the development of a comprehensive National Energy Strategy (NES) built upon a national consensus. The overall principle for the NES, as defined by the President and articulated by the Economic Policy Council (EPC), is the...

The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) of 1969, requires that all federal actions be reviewed before making a final decision to pursue a proposed action or one of its reasonable alternatives. The NEPA process is expected to begin early in the planning process. This paper discusses an...