Damages

Abstract: Customer switching behavior damages market share and profitability of service firms yet has remained virtually unexplored in the marketing literature. The author reports results of a critical incid...

Abstract: The ability to place a monetary value on the consequences of pollution discharges is a cornerstone of the economic approach to the environment. If this cannot be done, it undercuts the use of economic principles, whether to determine the optimal level of pollution or to implement this via Pigouvian taxes or Coase-style liability rules. Sometimes, the valuation involves a straightforward application of methods for valuing market commodities, as when sparks from a passing train set fire to a wheat field. Often, however, the valuation is more difficult. Outcomes such as reducing the risk of human illness or death, maintaining populations of native fish in an estuary, or protecting visibility at national parks are not themselves goods that are bought and sold in a market. Yet, placing a monetary value on them can be essential for sound policy. The lack of a market to generate prices for such outcomes is no accident. Markets are often missing in such cases because of the nonexcludable or nonrival nature of the damages: for those affected by it, pollution may be a public good (or bad). The public good nature of the damages from pollution has several consequences. It explains, for example, why the damages are sometimes large—only a few people may want to own a sea otter pelt, say, but many may want this animal protected in the wild. It also explains why market prices are inappropriate measures of value. In the presence of externalities , market transactions do not fully capture preferences. Collective choice is the more relevant paradigm. This is precisely what Ciriacy-Wantrup (1947) had in mind when he first proposed the contingent valuation method. Individuals should be interviewed

Abstract: With climate change as prototype example, this paper analyzes the implications of structural uncertainty for the economics of low- probability, 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 im- plications 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.

Abstract: The corporate contract limited liability voting the fiduciary principle the business judgment rule, and the derivative suit corporate control transactions the appraisal remedy tender offers the incorporation debate and state antitakeover statutes close corporations trading on inside information mandatory disclosure optimal damages.

Abstract: This study examines the costs and benefits of an aggressive programme of global action to limit greenhouse warming An initial chapter summarizes the scientific issues from the standpoint of an economist The analysis places heavy emphasis on efforts over a long run of 200 to 300 years, with much greater warming and damages than associated with the conventional benchmark (a doubling of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere) Estimates are presented for economic damages, ranging from agricultural losses and sea-level rise to loss of forests, water scarcity, electricity requirements for air conditioning, and several other major effects A survey of existing model estimates provides the basis for calculation of costs of limiting emissions of greenhouse gases After a review of the theory of term discounting in the context of very-long-term environmental issues, the study concludes with a cost-benefit estimate for international action and a discussion of policy measures to mobilize the global response