Agencies charged with regulating complex risks such as food safety or novel substances frequently need to take decisions on risk assessment and risk management under conditions of ambiguity, i.e. where probabilities cannot be assigned to possible outcomes of regulatory actions. What mandates...

How much is a wildflower worth? Inspired by "The worth of a songbird" by Funtowicz and Ravetz (1994) we use the value of a wildflower as symbol of the complexity of evaluating environmental qualities and risks. We critically discuss the application of cost-benefit analysis in evaluating...

The concept of ecosystems services has become an important model for linking the functioning of ecosystems to human welfare benefits. Understanding this link is critical in decision-making contexts. While there have been several attempts to come up with a classification scheme for ecosystem...

We study international trade of innovative goods subject to scientific uncertainty on consumers' health effects. Trade of these goods is often at the centre of international disputes. We show that a new trade protectionism may arise because of the scientific uncertainty. A free riding effect is...

The One Million Initiative aims to give one million people in rural Mozambique access to clean drinking water and adequate sanitation by constructing new water points and providing sanitation training. We use panel survey data for 1600 households to analyze the health impact of the Initiative....

We measure to cost of extreme weather events (droughts and floods) on health care in Sri Lanka. We find that frequently occurring local floods and droughts impose a significant risk to health when individuals are exposed directly to these hazards, and when their communities are exposed, even if...

The Congress and Exhibition Series ""Arsenic in the Environment"" offers an international, multi- and interdisciplinary discussion platform for research and innovation aimed towards a holistic solution to the challenges posed by the environmental toxin arsenic, with global societal impact. The...

If the precautionary principle must become the guide of the international community for environmental protection policies, an economic interpretation of the principle is in order. The analysis of case studies and a survey of the recent decision theoretic literature show on the one hand, the...

We suggest a two-country, two-sector model as a basis for the control of global climate change in which the dynamic time path of the world economy is analysed under the provision that the outcomes of a negotiation game generate the global optimal solution.

In this paper, we argue that the joint use of ex-ante regulation and ex-post liability rules is efficient when there are uncertainty surrounding causal investigations and regulatory myopia. As these conditions are generally met in environmental cases, we provide an explanation for the frequent...