The economics of global environmental risk

Graciela Chichilnisky

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: This chapter focusses on global environmental risks such as climate change, an issue that must be confronted as we move into the future. It proposes sound principles of risk management that make sense in today's society generally, going beyond their role of averting and hedging climate risks. This chapter is about these and related questions. In attempting to answer them, it deals with different aspects of the theory of risk-bearing. I explain current responses to global change, focusing on the new challenges: human-induced or endogenous risks, including potentially catastrophic risks, which are not adequately treated by traditional economic analysis. In summary, we are dealing with risks that have two major new characteristics: they are endogenous and potentially catastrophic. In addition, climate risks have three more conventional features: they are poorly understood, correlated and irreversible. In all cases, this chapter proposes ways to advance our understanding of the problems. This chapter proposes ways to evaluate decisions under endogenous and potentially catastrophic risks, and incorporates often neglected features of correlated, poorly understood and irreversible risks. The analysis proposed here opens new ways of thinking and at the same time poses new challenges. At the end I indicate new areas of research.

Keywords: risk; global environment; climate change; endogenous risk; catastrophic risk; risk management; mathematical modeling; endogenous uncertainty; policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C6 D81 G32 Q54 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1998
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/8812/1/MPRA_paper_8812.pdf original version (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:8812

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany Ludwigstraße 33, D-80539 Munich, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Joachim Winter ().