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.

Survey Insights into Weighting Environmental Damages: Influence of Context and Group

Abstract: When one models impact pathways due to stressors that are caused by the provision of product systems, it results in indicators for environmental damages. These indicators are incommensurable and cannot be compared per se. For example, the statistical life years lost for a human population cannot necessarily be compared with the potentially affected fraction of species within an ecosystem. However, some decision makers who use life-cycle assessment (LCA) prefer a single index, because it facilitates interpretation better than a multi-indicator system. This requires a method for aggregating environmental damages of differing types, thereby confronting LCA with a valuation problem. The article describes a nonmonetary approach to valuation in LCA that incorporates the findings of a survey among LCA practitioners and users. The survey focuses on the weighting of three safeguard subjects for Eco-indicator 99, a damage-oriented impact-assessment method: human health, ecosystem quality, and resources. Of particular interest here is what influence the context provided in the survey (framing) and an individual's characteristics have on his or her weighting of environmental damages. The results indicate that damages on the European level are easier to compare than damages on a micro level. Additionally, although only half of the survey participants could be classified unequivocally into one of three cultural perspectives, each perspective rated the damage categories presented to them significantly differently from the others. Our conclusions were that framing effects need to be more carefully considered in weighting procedures and that weighting preferences vary significantly according to a group's archetypical attitudes.

The Significant Association Between Punitive and Compensatory Damages in Blockbuster Cases: A Methodological Primer

Abstract: This article assesses the relation between punitive and compensatory damages in a data set, gathered by Hersch and Viscusi (H-V), consisting of all known punitive damages awards in excess of $100 million from 1985 through 2003. It shows that a strong, statistically significant relation exists between punitive and compensatory awards, a relation that replicates similar findings in nearly all other analyses of punitive and compensatory damages. H-V's claim that no significant relation exists between punitive and compensatory awards in these data appears to be an artifact of questionable regression methodology.

The social costs of climate change: A critical examination

Abstract: There is a growing body of literature on economic aspects of global warming Whereas the research in greenhouse gas (GHG) abatement costs has provided many studies, the question of greenhouse damage valuation has gained little attention yet Ongoing the first section of this paper provides a brief overview of the main results relating to the costs of reducing CO2 emission. Afterwards the main interest is focused to the benefits of emission abatement, defined as the benefits from avoided damages. A synthesis of both costs and benefits is to find an economical\y efficient war for the optimum amongst emission abatement and not avoided damages otherwise. Guided by the mainly applied Cost-Benefit-Analysis (CBA), there are several examinations to evaluate the social costs of greenhouse gas emissions. Finally same criticism related to the here presented and often applied Cost-Benefit-Approach as well as an outlook will follow.