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Natural Disaster Risks: An Introduction, W. Kip Viscusi
Natural Disaster Risks: An Introduction, W. Kip Viscusi
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
An introduction to a special issue of the Journal of Risk and Uncertainty dealing with the implications of catastrophic events for research on risk and uncertainty. What are the consequences of natural disasters? How do individuals and firms respond to such disasters? How do insurers respond, and how should the government respond? Several of these papers will have a strong normative component as they will suggest what actions individuals, firms, and the government should take in anticipation of natural disasters.
The Denominator Blindness Effect: Accident Frequencies And The Misjudgment Of Recklessness, W. Kip Viscusi
The Denominator Blindness Effect: Accident Frequencies And The Misjudgment Of Recklessness, W. Kip Viscusi
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
People seriously misjudge accident risks because they routinely neglect relevant information about exposure. Such risk judgments affect both personal and public policy decisions, e.g., choice of a transport mode, but also play a vital role in legal determinations, such as assessments of recklessness. Experimental evidence for a sample of 422 jury-eligible adults indicates that people incorporate information on the number of accidents, which is the numerator of the risk frequency calculation. However, they appear blind to information on exposure, such as the scale of a firm's operations, which is the risk frequency denominator. Hence, the actual observed accident frequency of …