Abstract—With climate change as prototype example, this paper analyzes the implications of structural uncertainty for the economics of lowprobability, high-impact catastrophes. Even when updated by Bayesian learning, uncertain structural parameters induce a critical “tail fattening” of posterior-predictive distributions. Such fattened tails have strong implications for situations, like climate change, where a catastrophe is theoretically possible because prior knowledge cannot place sufficiently narrow bounds on overall damages. This paper shows that the economic consequences of fat-tailed structural uncertainty (along with unsureness about high-temperature damages) can readily outweigh the effects of discounting in climate-change policy analysis. I.

Smoke from massive wildfires blanketed Indonesia in late 1997. This paper examines the impact this air pollution (particulate matter) had on infant and fetal mortality. Deaths are inferred from “missing children ” in the 2000 Indonesian Census, exploiting the sharp timing and spatial patterns of the pollution. Prenatal exposure to pollution is found to have a large effect on survival. The fire-induced pollution led to 16,400 fewer surviving infants in Indonesia. The effect size is much larger in poorer areas. Environmental damage that occurs alongside economic development may have large health costs and may contribute to the socioeconomic gradient in health.

Ravallion, Rodrigo Soares, and Jim Smith for comments and help in the preparation of this Disease has traveled with goods and people since the earliest times. Armed globalization spread disease, to the extent of eliminating entire populations. The geography of disease shaped patterns of colonization and industrialization throughout the now poor world. Many see related threats to public health from current globalization. Multilateral and bilateral trade agreements do not always adequately represent the interests of poor countries, the General Agreement on Trade in Services may restrict the freedom of signatories to shape their own health delivery systems, and it remains unclear whether current arrangements for intellectual property rights are in the interests of citizens of poor countries with HIV/AIDS. However, to the extent that globalization promotes economic growth, population health may benefit, and there has been substantial reductions in poverty and in international inequalities in life-expectancy over the last 50 years. Although there is a strong inverse relationship between the poverty and life-expectancy in levels, gains in life expectancy have been only weakly correlated with growth rates and, in the last decade, the HIV/AIDS epidemic has widened international inequalities in life expectancy. The rapid

Abstract. In this article the hedonic regression technique is used to estimate the value of traffic safety, using information from the Swedish market for automobiles. The results from the study show that the market price of an automobile is negatively correlated with its inherent risk level, i.e Swedish car consumers pay a safety premium for safer cars. In comparison to previous Swedish stated-preference studies, this study reveals a lower willingness to pay for additional car safety, which might be a result of the interaction between government interventions and individual self-insurance and self-protection.

When studying consumption choices, economists have often relied on the abstraction of a representative agent. Such an agent can indeed be shown to exist and to replicate the aggregate consumers ’ demand under standard, but not necessarily convincing assumptions (Kirman (1992)). There was also a justifiable reluctance to introducing heterogeneous preferences, as such a step may seem ad hoc when trying to explain different consumption behaviors. The rise of empirical studies based on micro data has opened new perspectives. The micro-economic importance of uninsurable risks is now recognized, and threatens the foundations of the representative agent hypothesis often used in macroeconomics.. The continuing controversies surrounding the question of individual attitudes towards risk has motivated many empirical studies and observations; most of them conclude to a bewildering diversity of individual preferences1 This paper proposes to check the conditions under which heterogeneous individual attitudes toward risk can be non-parametrically identified from discrete data on choices under risk. Our main result establishes that given data that is usually available (essentially market shares of the different options, plus the realizations of the final outcomes of agents), the analyst can recover the whole distribution of individual preferences if this can be indexed by a one-dimensional parameter, provided that a fairly weak single-crossing Columbia University.

I am apt to think, if we knew what it was to be an angel for one hour, we should return to this world, though it were to sit on the brightest throne in it, with vastly more loathing and reluctance than we would now descend into a loathsome dungeon or sepulchre. 1 Berkley (1685-1753) Extreme human enhancement could result in “posthuman ” modes of being. After offering some definitions and conceptual clarification, I argue for two theses. First, some posthuman modes of being would be very worthwhile. Second, it could be very good for human beings to become posthuman. 1. Setting the stage The term “posthuman ” has been used in very different senses by different authors. 2 I am sympathetic to the view that the word often causes more confusion than clarity, and that we might be better off replacing it with some alternative vocabulary. However, as the purpose of this paper is not to propose terminological reform but to argue for certain substantial normative theses (which one would naturally search for in the literature under the label “posthuman”), I will instead attempt to achieve intelligibility by clarifying the meaning that I shall assign to the word. Such terminological clarification is surely a minimum precondition for having a meaningful discussion about whether it might be good for us to become posthuman. I shall define a posthuman as a being that has at least one posthuman capacity. By a posthuman capacity, I mean a general central capacity greatly exceeding the maximum attainable by any current human being without recourse to new technological means. I will use general central capacity to refer to the following: healthspan – the capacity to remain fully healthy, active, and productive, both mentally and physically cognition – general intellectual capacities, such as memory, deductive and analogical reasoning, and attention, as well as special faculties such as the capacity to understand

support. All remaining errors are of course our own. In the Netherlands certain groups in the population are offered preventive health care free of charge, including flu shots (65+ population, every year), cervical cancer tests (women 30-60, every five years), mammograms (women 50+, every two years), and kidney checks. We analyze individuals decisions to decline or accept these interventions, using a survey that includes information on actual participation, risk factors, and socioeconomic background variables. In particular, we study individuals ’ perceptions of the effectiveness of the interventions, by eliciting subjective probabilities of sickness and survival, both with and without the interventions. Complicating features are the need to ask about conditional probabilities, and the fact that many of the relevant probabilities are very small. We also analyze the relationship between risk factors and perceived probabilities, and compare the subjective probabilities with epidemiological estimates. A majority of respondents answer the probability questions in an internally consistent way and appear to be aware of some of the qualitative relationships between risk factors

Based on the aggregation of individual willingness-to-pay for a statistical life, we calibrate an intertemporal optimization model to determine the aggregate welfare losses from HIV/AIDS in 25 Eastern European countries. Assuming a discount rate of three percent, we find a total welfare loss for the whole region of 1.2 trillion US-$, approximately 16 percent of the region’s annual GDP between 1995 and 2001. Although prevalence and incidence rates diverge sharply between countries – with central Europe far less affected than the major countries in the Commonwealth of Independent States and the Baltics – the epidemic is likely to spread to all countries unless a coherent strategy of prevention and treatment is backed up by substantial increases in health care investments. The sheer size of this task and the international nature of the epidemic render this one of the most important current challenges for all of Europe.

Each year, US government agencies promulgate health and safety regulations that impose hundreds of millions of dollars of costs on the national economy. A key issue in developing these regulations is determining whether the value of the associated risk reductions and other benefits exceeds the value of the resources diverted from other purposes. This article

This Draft Report to Congress on regulatory policy was prepared pursuant to the Regulatory Right-to-Know Act. It provides a statement of the costs and benefits of Federal regulations and recommendations for regulatory reforms. The report will be published in its final form later this year, after revisions to this draft are made based on public comment, external peer review, and interagency review. A major feature of this report is the estimates of the total costs and benefits of regulations reviewed by OMB. Major Federal regulations cleared by OMB from October 1, 1993, to September 30, 2003, were examined to determine their quantifiable benefits and costs. The estimated annual benefits range from $62 billion to $168 billion, while the estimated annual costs range from $34 billion to $39 billion. A substantial portion of both benefits and costs is attributable to a handful of EPA clean-air rules that reduce public exposure to fine particulate matter. During the past year, 6 “major ” final rules with quantified and monetized benefits and costs were adopted. These rules added $1.6 to $4.5 billion in annual benefits compared to $1.9 billion in annual costs. There were an additional 8 final “major ” rules that did not have quantified and monetized estimates of both benefits and costs. The Report also reviews the international literature on the effects of regulation on national economic growth and performance. Based on a comparison of 130 countries, the