MARC Record from Oregon Libraries

LEADER: 02421cam a2200373Ia 4500
001 180194840
003 OCoLC
005 20080208012847.0
007 cr mn|||||||||
008 071101s2007 mau b 000 0 eng d
035 $a(OCoLC)180194840
040 $aIUL$cIUL$dGZM$dNTE
049 $aNTEA$aNTEF
090 $aHB1$b.W654 no.13490
100 1 $aWeitzman, Martin L.,$d1942-
245 10 $aStructural uncertainty and the value of statistical life in the economics of catastrophic climate change /$cMartin Weitzman.
260 $aCambridge, Mass. :$bNational Bureau of Economic Research,$cc2007.
300 $a34 p. ;$c22 cm.
490 1 $aNBER working paper series ;$vno. 13490.
500 $a"October 2007"
504 $aIncludes bibliographical references (p. 32-34).
520 $aUsing climate change as a prototype motivating example, this paper analyzes the implications of structural uncertainty for the economics of low-probability high-impact catastrophes. The paper shows that having an uncertain multiplicative parameter, which scales or amplifies exogenous shocks and is updated by Bayesian learning, induces a critical "tail fattening" of posterior-predictive distributions. These fattened tails can 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. The essence of the problem is the difficulty of learning extreme-impact tail behavior from finite data alone. At least potentially, the influence on cost-benefit analysis of fat-tailed uncertainty about the scale of damages -- coupled with a high value of statistical life -- can outweigh the influence of discounting or anything else.
530 $aAlso available in PDF from the NBER world wide web site (www.nber.org).
650 0 $aClimatic changes$xEconomic aspects$xEconometric models.
650 0 $aDisasters$xEconomic aspects$xEconometric models.
650 0 $aLife$xValuation$xEconometric models.
710 2 $aNational Bureau of Economic Research.
830 0 $aWorking paper series (National Bureau of Economic Research) ;$vworking paper no. 13490.
856 41 $uhttp://www.nber.org/papers/W13490
907 $a.b34343477$bmulti$c-
902 $a080208
998 $b2$c080208$dm$ea$f-$g0
945 $lwhs $aHB1$b.W654 no.13490
945 $lt $aHB1$b.W654 no.13490 (Electronic resource)