Damages

About: Damages is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 9365 publications have been published within this topic receiving 89750 citations. The topic is also known as: compensation award.

Sources of Data on Freezing Rain and Resulting Damages

Abstract: Freezing rain produces major damages each year in the United States, and various affected groups continue to seek data on the incidence and losses produced by freezing rain. The various kinds of data available about freezing rain and related damages have been identified and assessed as part of a project to develop long-term databases. Data include long-term records of the occurrences of freezing rain, 50-yr records of insured property losses, and measures and estimates of ice loading on wires and structures. Many years of interactions with affected and interested groups and individuals, such as the insurance industry and design engineers, led to the preparation of this summary that describes the various sources of data on freezing-rain and ice-storm damages. The benefits and limitations of each form of data are presented to help to guide potential data users.

Timing Problems in Contract Breach Decisions

Abstract: In contracts susceptible to efficient breach, each party has an American option to breach and pay damages rather than perform. She will repudiate early if the expected decrease in damages liability resulting from her partner's mitigation exceeds the expected value of the terminated contract, including the option to breach in the future. We show that each party has the incentive to repudiate earlier than socially optimal because expectation damages compensate the nonrepudiating party only for the loss of the completed exchange and not the value of its lost breach option. This inefficiency is particularly acute in long‐term, fixed‐price contracts in which the cost of performance to the promisor and the value to the promisee are volatile and uncorrelated. We explore various responses to this problem, including vertical integration, changes in contract remedies (including specific performance), flexible price provisions, and the capital structure of each party.

The Impact of Trading on the Costs and Benefits of the Acid Rain Program

Abstract: This study quantifies the cost savings from the Acid Rain Program (ARP) compared with a command-and-control alternative and also examines the impact of trading under the ARP on health damages. To quantify cost savings, we compare compliance costs for non-NSPS (New Source Performance Standards) coal-fired Electricity Generating Units (EGUs) under the ARP with compliance costs under a uniform performance standard that achieves the same aggregate emissions. We do this for the year 2002, the third year of Phase II of the program. We find annual cost savings of approximately $240 million (1995$). To examine the health effects of trading, we compute the health damages associated with observed sulfur dioxide (SO2) emissions from all units regulated under the ARP in 2002—approximately 10.2 million tons—and compare them with damages from a No-Trade counterfactual in which each unit emits SO2 at a rate equal to its allocation of permits for the year 2002, plus any drawdown of its allowance bank. Damages under the ARP are $2.4 billion (2000$) higher than under the No-Trade. This reflects the transfer of allowances from EGUs west of the Mississippi River to units in the eastern US with higher exposed populations.

Possibilities and limitations of economically valuating ecological damages

Abstract: Ecological damages have to be evaluated in monetary terms for implementation in an economic analysis. Economic theory is based upon individual preferences (methodological individualism): Ecological damages can only be socially evaluated when individual values are available. However, in sharp contrast to marketable goods and services, ecological damages generally are pure public goods and, thus, market prices as a lower value bound do not exist. Therefore, we have to use alternative evaluation methods to get economic values of ecological damages. In this paper, we concentrate on four main points of the evaluation of ecological damages in economic models: Firstly, we show the general economic approach to obtain values of non­marketable goods and services on a micro­ economic level. Afterwards, we discuss the assumptions and shortcomings of the economic approach. Thirdly, we determine optimal social environmental levels from a macro­perspective which is followed by an analysis of the applicability of this approach. Some summarizing remarks close the paper.

The External Costs of Nuclear Power: Ex Ante Damages and Lay Risks

Abstract: Interest has been growing in embedding the external costs of fuel cycles resulting in electricity generation into prices. In any attempt to internalize these costs for the nuclear cycle, the remost but real possibilities of accidents and the wide gap between lay perceptions and expert assessments of such risks must be taken into account. This paper discusses this including the following topics: An expected utility model of power plant operations/accident risks; simulation; comparison of experts versus lay risks; comparison of experts versus lay risk literature; simulation of expert versus lay risks. Current practice in estimating the damages from accidents at nuclear power plants appear to ignore significant features of the problem from the perspective of economic analysis. Individual aversion to risk, the exante perspective in decision making under uncertainty, and lay risk perception are all conceptually important elements of a damage estimate that accords with observation of behavior and the theory that underlies it but that are ignored by common practice. 18 refs., 1 tab.