When one can circle the globe in less than the time of incubation of most infectious pathogens, it is clear every country relies to some extent on the health systems of other countries to prevent and protect their citizens from global health threats. Therefore, creating and maintaining a good...

The share of increases in life expectancy realized after age 65 was only about 20 percent at the beginning of the 20th century for the US and 16 other countries at comparable stages of development; but that share was close to 80 percent by the dawn of the 21st century, and is almost certainly...

There is a low but uncertain probability that climate change could trigger “mega-catastrophes,” severe and at least partly irreversible adverse effects across broad regions. This paper first discusses the state of current knowledge and the defining characteristics of potential climate change...

Deep-seated, persistent uncertainty is a pernicious feature of climate change. One key parameter, equilibrium climate sensitivity, has eluded almost all attempts at pinning it down more precisely than a ‘likely’ range that has stalled at 1.5–4.5°C for over thirty-five years. The marginal...

This article describes the anatomy of health insurance. It begins by considering the optimal design of health insurance policies. Such policies must make tradeoffs appropriately between risk sharing on the one hand and agency problems such as moral hazard (the incentive of people to seek more...