RFF Regulating Risks

Come Rain or Shine: Evidence on Flood Insurance Purchases in Florida

The Unholy Trinity: Fat Tails, Tail Dependence, and Micro-Correlations

Will Global Warming Discount Rates Short-Change Our Grandkids?

Commentary: Oxford's Cameron Hepburn considers the role of ethics in calculating discount rates for global warming damages to future generations and how to reconcile differing views in the debate.

Production Risk and Farm Technology Adoption in Rain-Fed, Semi-Arid Lands of Kenya

The Reality of Precaution

The "Precautionary Principle"?allowing or favoring regulation of risks despite uncertainty?has been at the center of debates about European and U.S. risk management since the 1990s. Does adopting the precautionary principle protect us against uncertain risks, or does it inhibit progress and introduce new risks? Has Europe become "more precautionary" than the United States? The Reality of Precaution is the first study to go beyond the rhetoric of precaution as an abstract principle and test the reality of precaution in practice. Challenging conventional wisdom about European and U.S. approaches to risk regulation, this groundbreaking resource finds that since the 1970s there has been little transatlantic difference in the overall level of precaution, but that instead there have been variations in precaution across particular individual risks. For example, while Europe has been more precautionary regarding genetically modified foods, beef hormones, toxic chemicals, and climate change, the U.S. has been more precautionary regarding mad cow disease, air pollution, ozone depletion, and terrorism. Moreover, both the U.S. and Europe have adopted systems of regulatory oversight through impact assessment. Combining a dozen case studies, a quantitative analysis of almost 3,000 risks,and cross-cutting chapters on politics, law, and risk perceptions, this book argues that the relationship between U.S. and European regulatory approaches is best understood not as conflict or competition, nor in terms of divergence or reversal, but rather as a process of selective application of precaution to particular risks, and a continuing exchange of ideas yielding mutual cooperation and hybridization. The Reality of Precaution advises policymakers in both the U.S. and Europe to compare actual regulatory experience, to borrow useful policy designs, and to seek optimal (not maximal) precaution that accounts fully for risks, costs, and ancillary impacts.

Assessing the Growing Dangers of Tiny Things

Resources Magazine: Nanotechnology promises big benefits, but RFF?s Terry Davies says that governments lack the oversight needed to reduce health, social, and environmental risks.

A New Approach to Reforming the National Flood Insurance Program

Commentary: Adding a federal community flood insurance option could increase coverage, spread risk, and lower premiums, says RFF resident scholar Leonard Shabman.

Informed Consent in Social Science

A Shopping List for America?s Riskiest Foods

Resources Magazine: Foodborne illness can be blamed on a surprisingly small number of foods and pathogens, according to a new study.

Insuring Against Catastrophe: A Feasible Goal?

Resources Magazine: Roger Cooke and Carolyn Kousky look at the variables involved in the increasing toll of natural disasters and suggest insurance strategies, practical building measures, and public policies to deal with risks from catastrophe.

The Persistance of Risk

A Brief History of Quantitative Risk Assessment

Nanotechnology and Risk

Are Catastrophes Insurable?

Resources 172 - Summer 2009

New Ideas for Risk Regulation

A two-day conference co-sponsored by RFF and the Society for Risk Analysis looked at options for improving the regulation environmental, health, safety, and security risks.

Reflections on Three Decades of Energy Policy

Climate Policy and Competition: U.S. Industry?s Regulatory Dilemma

The Future of Regulatory Oversight and Analysis

In a June 8 commentary, Susan Dudley and Art Fraas discuss the role of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in providing independent assessments of the benefits and costs of agency rulemakings.

Hurricanes, Risk, and Liability: Looking to Congress for Relief

Three legislative approaches are being considered to create effective public policies to deal with catastrophic natural disasters, such as large-scale hurricanes. An op-ed in the St. Petersburg Times by Roger Cooke and Carolyn Kousky examines the merits of each.

Risk Implications of Farm Technology Adoption in the Ethiopian Highlands

Governing Uncertainty: Environmental Regulation in the Age of Nanotechnology

Nanotechnology promises to transform the materials of everyday life, leading to smaller and more powerful computers, more durable plastics and fabrics, cheap and effective water purification systems, more efficient solar panels and storage batteries, and medical devices capable of tracking down and killing cancer cells or treating neurological diseases. Policy analysts predict a radical change in the industrial sector, and at present, the U.S. government spends nearly $2 billion annually on nanotechnology research and development. Yet the nanotechnology revolution is not straightforward. Enthusiasm about nanotechnology?s future is tempered by recognition of the hurdles to its responsible development, including the capacity of government to support technological innovation and economic growth while also addressing potential environmental and public health impacts. This is the first volume to engage scholarly perspectives on environmental regulation in light of the challenges posed by emerging nanotechnologies. Contributors focus on the overarching lessons of decades of regulatory response, while posing a fundamental core question: How can government regulatory systems satisfy the desire for scientific innovation while also taking into account the direct and indirect effects of 21st emerging technologies, particularly in the face of scientific uncertainties? With perspectives from economics, history, philosophy, and public policy, this new resource illuminates the various challenges inherent in the development of nanotechnology and works towards a reorganization of government regulatory approaches.

Consultative Forum on AMFm ? The Affordable Medicines Facility - malaria

AMFm: Reaching the Poorest of the Poor with Effective Malaria Drugs

Unintended Impacts of Multiple Instruments on Technology Adoption

Optimal Enforcement and Practical Issues of Resource Protection in Developing Countries

Improving Flood Insurance and Flood Risk Management: Insights from St. Louis, Missouri

Energy Security and Climate Change Protection: Complementarity or Tradeoff?

Willingness to Pay for Mortality Risk Reductions: Does Latency Matter?

The Value of Mortality Risk Reductions in Delhi, India

The Impact of Policies to Control Motor Vehicle Emissions in Mumbai, India

Why Have Traffic Fatalities Declined in Industrialised Countries? Implications for Pedestrians and Vehicle Occupants

Measuring the welfare effects of slum improvement programs: The case of Mumbai

The Demand for Insecticide-Treated Mosquito Nets

Food Safety: Challenges to the System

Experts in regulating food safety at an RFF First Wednesday Seminar discuss recent food scares and strategies to strengthen the food safety network and protect public health.

Climate Change and Risk Management: Challenges for Insurance, Adaptation, and Loss Estimation

Restructuring India?s Chaotic Water System

Taming the Anarchy, a just-published book from RFF Press and the International Water Management Institute, proposes new water policies to regulate irrigation practices across the Indian subcontinent.

New Protocols for Keeping Planes Apart

As air traffic volume continues to grow, the need for new ? and safe ? ways to merge and separate planes in flight is more important than ever. A new paper by Chauncey Starr Senior Fellow Roger Cooke assesses proposed NASA protocols.

System Level Risk Analysis of New Merging and Spacing Protocols

Taxes, Permits, and the Diffusions of a New Technology

Smog Check

When a new federal regulatory program conflicts with an existing state-level system, whose approach should prevail? During the 1990s, the federal government sought to implement the Clean Air Act Amendments and resolve previous problems that it had with compliance. This lead to an intense conflict between U.S. EPA regulators and the state of California. The disagreement involved a federally mandated auto emissions program with centralized testing and California?s existing program that was implemented through local garages (service stations)?a program that was popularly called ?Smog Check.? The dispute over Smog Check grew into a clash that had national significance and was further complicated by a recession, the politics of a gubernatorial election, a transition between presidential administrations, and California?s possible loss of nearly $1 billion in federal funds if the state failed to comply with EPA mandates.

The debate over Smog Check ended when EPA finally granted California, and the rest of the nation, greater regulatory flexibility. Fundamental to the Smog Check controversy were questions about federal versus state authority as well as battles between colorful personalities. In his new book, Smog Check, Douglas S. Eisinger presents these struggles in fascinating, first-hand detail. Eisinger, an EPA official at the time of this conflict, probes deeply into the issues and explores broader questions including: when does it become imperative for agencies to bargain with one another, when should regulatory flexibility and performance-based regulations be favored over command and control approaches, what should be done when decisions need to be made in the face of scientific disagreement about both the scope of a problem and the effectiveness of different solutions? He concludes the book with commentary from other former EPA officials who were witnesses or participants in the Smog Check controversy.

Smog Check is engaging reading for students interested in intergovernmental relations and regulatory reform. It provides insight for policy professionals involved in environmental protection whenever it involves coordination between federal and state or local agencies.

Does Disclosure Reduce Pollution? Evidence from India?s Green Rating Project

Long-Term Risks and Short-Term Regulations: Modeling the Transition from Enhanced Oil Recovery to Geologic Carbon Sequestration

How Should We Tackle the Forest Fire Problem?

Options Contracts for Contingent Takings

Private Investment and Government Protection

Obstacles to Clear Thinking about Natural Disasters: Five Lessons for Policy

The Incidence of U.S. Climate Policy: Where You Stand Depends on Where You Sit

Managing Forces of Change: A Policy View

Balancing Cost and Emissions Certainty: An Allowance Reserve for Cap-and-Trade

Trade, GMOs, and Environmental Risk: Are Policies Likely to Improve Welfare?

Gaps in Aging Levees Leave DC Landmarks Exposed

Leonard Shabman comments on the failure to ensure maintenance and repair of DC levees.

Cosmic Markdown: EPA Says Life Is Worth Less

Joe Aldy discusses research involved in determining the value of statistical life

Floodproofing the Future

The best way to reduce damage from floods is to keep people out of harm's way, argues Carolyn Kousky in a recent op-ed published in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Kousky, a new fellow, joined RFF in September.

An Update on the Science of Acidification in the Adirondack Park

Offsets: Incentivizing Reductions While Managing Uncertainty and Ensuring Integrity

Revamping Regulation

An RFF workshop bringing together government officials, economists, and legal experts launches an initiative to examine potential reforms to traditional benefit-cost analysis that would respond to concerns of critics.

Elicitation from Large, Heterogeneous Expert Panels: Using Multiple Uncertainty Measures to Characterize Information Quality for Decision Analysis.

Are Decisionmakers at Home on the Range?

Corporate Social Responsibility Through an Economic Lens

The Role of Soil Conservation on Mean Crop Yield and Variance of Yield: Evidence from the Ethiopian Highlands

Economics of Soil Conservation Adoption in High-Rainfall Areas of the Ethiopian Highlands

Instrument Choice in Environmental Policy

What Drives Participation in State Voluntary Cleanup Programs? Evidence from Oregon

Market Imperfections and Farm Technology Adoption Decisions: A Case Study from the Highlands of Ethiopia

RFF Scholar Considers EPA Oversight for Nanotechnology

Senior Fellow Terry Davies authors new report released by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars' Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies.

Post-Katrina: Getting the Incentives and Priorities Right

Senior Fellow Kate Probst and Journalist-in-Residence J.W. Anderson argue that we need to rethink the Federal response to Katrina to make sure the right questions get asked, and the right decisions are made.

Taking Risks on the Space Frontier

In the new issue of Resources, Senior Fellow Molly Macauley explores how human risk in space activities should be approached and managed.

Sudden Catastrophic Change: Costing Out The Challenges of Preparing for the Worst

Judge Richard A. Posner, author of Overcoming Law and Catastrophe: Risk and Response, speaks at the March RFF First Wednesday Seminar.