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...

If the precautionary principle is to 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 the lack of a fully...

In this paper, we extend the well known result that hyperbolically discounting agents tend to postpone costs into the future. In a simple model we show that, without commitment to the ex ante optimal plan, no investment in environmental protection is undertaken over the whole time horizon, no...