Risk Analysis: Foundations, Models, and Methods fully addresses the questions of "What is health risk analysis?" and "How can its potentialities be developed to be most valuable to public health decision-makers and other health risk managers?" Risk analysis provides methods and principles for answering these questions. It is divided into methods for assessing, communicating, and managing health risks. Risk assessment quantitatively estimates the health risks to individuals and to groups from hazardous exposures and from the decisions or activities that create them. It applies specialized models and methods to quantify likely exposures and their resulting health risks. Its goal is to produce information to improve decisions. It does this by relating alternative decisions to their probable consequences and by identifying those decisions that make preferred outcomes more likely. Health risk assessment draws on explicit engineering, biomathematical, and statistical consequence models to describe or simulate the causal relations between actions and their probable effects on health. Risk communication characterizes and presents information about health risks and uncertainties to decision-makers and stakeholders. Risk management applies principles for choosing among alternative decision alternatives or actions that affect exposure, health risks, or their consequences.

In order to survive as a social institution a firm needs a constitutional social contract, even though implicit, among its stakeholders. This social contract must exist if an institution is to be justified. The book focuses on two main issues: To find out the terms of the hypothetical agreement among the firm's stakeholders in an ex ante perspective and to understand the endogenous mechanism generating appropriate incentives that induce to comply with the social contract itself, as seen in the ex post perspective.

Firms do not patent every invention. In many cases they rather rely on trade secrecyorothernon-legalmeanstoprotecttheirintellectualproperty, i. e. the returns on their investments in research and development (R&D). A patent confers to its ownerthe exclusiverights to prevent third parties frommaking, using, o?ering for sale, selling, or importing for these purposes the patent protected product (Art. 28, Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Int- lectual Property Rights (TRIPs)). In exchange for the temporary monopoly which is securedby this protection, the patentee has todisclose the invention in a manner su?ciently clear and complete for it to be carried out by a p- son skilled in the art (Art. 83, European Patent Convention (EPC)). Thus every patent has the drawbackof a possible loss of a technologicalleadership caused by the mandatory disclosure of formerly proprietary knowledge. The patentee has to fear that this transfer of enabling knowledge included in the patent description may bene't his rivals by facilitating their rapid catch-up. The relevance and actual enforcement of the disclosurerequirement is und- lined by the European Commission's Green Paper on Innovation (European Commission (1996)). In the so-called Route of Action 8 on the promotion of intellectual and industrial property it is stated that a desirable action should be the"promotion of patent information services as a method of technology watch based, in particular, on the information system set up by the European Patent O?ce"(European Commission (1996), p. 42).

Cooperation in Research and Development provides an empirical and theoretical analysis of a distinct form of inter-firm collaboration in Research & Development (R&D): research joint ventures (RJVs). Of all types of cooperation, RJVs have received the most attention in both formal industrial organization and science and technology policy literature. The emerging theoretical economic literature on incentives of firms to join RJVs has not been followed by much empirical work. Cooperation in Research and Development attempts to fill the void caused by this lack of consistent data on the rate of RJV formation, RJV characteristics, and RJV member characteristics. Significant attention is paid to the role of RJVs in facilitating `virtual' firm diversification as necessary to pursue particular technological objectives. An effort is also made to blend the reported theoretical and empirical analyses with conceptual models of the process of technological innovation and models of industrial evolution in order to provide answers beyond the reach of the received economic theory. Cooperation in Research and Development should be of interest to academic economists, policy makers, and business representatives. The microeconomic issues the book deals with overlap significantly with the interests of decision makers both in government and business.

The main objective of this book is to restate the important theories and evidence from economic analysis concerning intergovernmental fiscal issues. More importantly, the second objective of the book is to identify gaps in knowledge, empirical uncertainties, and missing theoretical structures and then to establish a preliminary agenda for new research on this topic. The book is organized in two sections. The first covers the core body of intergovernmental fiscal relations, including optimal size for jurisdictions and assignment of public sector functions, the formulation and execution of tax policy in an intergovernmental setting, and the appropriate structure and use of intergovernmental transfers. In the second section, the core knowledge is applied to four major policy areas: education, welfare, fiscal interaction in urban areas, and economic development. In thinking about a new research agenda, the authors call for more current and authoritative estimates of fiscal incidence, including interjurisdictional spillovers, for more fundamental research about the federation process and effects of consolidation, for new evidence about the long run, general equilibrium effects of interjurisdictional competition, and for basic research about the choice process and establishment of intergovernmental fiscal institutions and policies by federal and subnational governments.

Empirical Studies in Industrial Organization brings together leading scholars who present state-of-the-art research in the spirit of the structure-conduct-performance paradigm embodied in the work of Leonard W. Weiss. The individual chapters are generally empirically or public policy oriented. A number of them introduce new sources of data that, combined with the application of appropriate econometric techniques, enable new breakthroughs and insights on issues hotly debated in the industrial organization literature. For example, five of the chapters are devoted towards uncovering the link between market concentration and pricing behavior. While theoretical models have produced ambiguous predictions concerning the relationship between concentration and price these chapters, which span a number of different markets and situations, provide unequivocal evidence that a high level of market concentration tends to result in a higher level of prices. Three of the chapters explore the impact of market structure on production efficiency, and three other chapters focus on the role of industrial organization on public policy. Contributors include David B. Audretsch, Richard E. Caves, Mark J. Roberts, F.M. Scherer, John J. Siegfried and Hideki Yamawaki.

Most of our daily decisions are made under uncertainty and risk, without complete information about all relevant aspects. We all constantly make such decisions, from the simplest "should I take my raincoat today?" to more serious examples, such as those on investment and portfolio decisions, holding of shares, insurance patterns, or negotiation processes. Within these situations, the bounded rationality of individuals and institutions towards risk and uncertainty is embedded. The central theory underlying this study is prospect theory, an adequate model to predict the real and most often bounded rationality of human behavior given certain incentives, preferences, and constraints.Evelyn Stommel investigates a crucial question within behavioral economics, namely the research on reference points within human decision making processes. Based on experimental investigations, she focuses three key challenges: what constitutes a reference point, the process of the formation of a reference point, and factors influencing the formation of reference points.

Uncertain Decisions: Bridging Theory and Experiments presents advanced directions of thinking on decision theory - in particular the more recent contributions on non-expected utility theory, fuzzy decision theory and case-based theory. This work also provides theoretical insights on measures of risk aversion and on new problems for general equilibrium analysis. It analyzes how the thinking that underlies the theories described above spills over into real decisions, and how the thinking that underlies these real decisions can explain the discrepancies between theoretical approaches and actual behavior. This work elaborates on how the most recent laboratory experiments have become an important source both for evaluating the leading theory of choice and decision, and for contributing to the formation of new models regarding the subject.

Markets, Pricing, and Deregulation of Utilities examines the effects of deregulation on the energy and telecommunications industries in an economic environment that has changed dramatically since deregulation was first introduced in those industries several years ago. The contributors to this book discuss the aspects of deregulation that appear to be succeeding and those that seem to be failing. Within that framework, they offer insight as to the possible next stages of regulatory restructuring and reform. The contents of this book provide a strong theoretical base leading to a better understanding of markets, pricing, and deregulation by utility managers, regulators, and economists.

Cost Structure and the Measurement of Economic Performance is designed to provide a comprehensive guide for students, researchers or consultants who wish to model, construct, interpret, and use economic performance measures. The topical emphasis is on productivity growth and its dependence on the cost structure. The methodological focus is on application of the tools of economic analysis - the `thinking structure' provided by microeconomic theory - to measure technological or cost structure, and link it with market and regulatory structure. This provides a rich basis for evaluation of economic performance and its determinants. The format of the book stresses topics or questions of interest rather than the theoretical tools for analysis. Traditional productivity growth modeling and measurement practices that result in a productivity residual often called the `measure of our ignorance' are initially overviewed, and then the different aspects of technological, market and regulatory structure that might underlie this residual are explored. The ultimate goal is to decompose or explain the residual, by modeling and measuring a multitude of impacts that determine the economic performance of firms, sectors, and economies. The chapters are organized with three broad goals in mind. The first is to introduce the overall ideas involved in economic performance measurement and traditional productivity growth analysis. Issues associated with different types of (short and long run, internal and external) cost economies, market and regulatory impacts, and other general cost efficiencies that might impact these measures are then explored. Finally, some of the theoretical, data construction and econometric tools necessary to justify and implement these models are emphasized.

Some of the fundamental tenets of conventional economic wisdom, which have had a profound impact on public policy, are challenged in this book. These precepts include the affirmation that low wages are more beneficial that high wages to the process of growth and development; convergence in terms of output per person is just a matter of time; minimum wage laws and trade unions negatively impact on the economy as a whole; pay inequality due to labor market discrimination cannot persist over time; larger firms are typically more efficient than smaller firms; and culture is of little consequence to the course of economic development. Such predictions, the author argues, are a product of unrealistic behavioral assumptions about the economic agent. In this book, the author offers a more inclusive theoretical framework and a more reasonable modeling of the economic agent. This new approach is built upon conventional neoclassical theory while incorporating the most recent research in behavioral economics. The case is made that individuals have some choice over the quantity and quality of effort which they can supply in the process of production. Even under the constraints of severe product market competition and the assumption of `utility maximizing' individuals, effort need not be maximized, especially in firms characterized by antagonistic management-labor relations. This is especially true when relatively inefficient firms can remain competitive by keeping wages relatively low - low wages serve to protect such firms from more efficient firms. Alternatively, relatively high wage firms can remain competitive only if they become more productive. Under these assumptions, higher wages and factors contributing to higher wages can advance the performance of an economy while lower wages can have the opposite effect and cultural and institutional variables, by themselves, can affect the long run productivity and even the long run competitiveness of firms and economies. In summary, this book calls for a revised approach to the study of economics from a behavioral and socio-economic perspective, with significant consequences for public policy.

1.1 Utilitarian Theories This book is a monograph on moral philosophy and social philosophy, particularly the part of the philosophy of economics that is related to the general distribution problem. It presents a comprehensive ethical theory, together with an application of the theory to distributive justice. The viewpoint of this theory is utilitarian. However, this theory is different in some crucial points, as well as in minor details, from all existing forms of utilitarianism. Moral philosophy deals essentially with the moral judgment of actions, i. e., whether a moral action is right or wrong, good or bad. The judgment is usually based on a line of logical reasoning, which can be traced to a final reason called the justification or ultimate principle. An ethical theory is a self-consistent system built upon a basic, or ultimate, principle. An ultimate principle can never be rigorously proven, and is not unique. Different philosophers establish different ethical theories upon different principles. Therefore, in the history of development of moral philosophy, there have been a large number of ethical theories and schools. Even wi thin the same school having the same ultimate principle, different philosophers may have different versions of the theory, because of small variations in the interpretation of the ultimate principle or in the elaboration of the details.

In 1987 the Swedish National Board for Technical Development (STU, later becoming the Swedish National Board for Industrial and Technical Development, NUTEK) initiated a study of Sweden's Technological Systems and Future Development Potential. A comprehensive, interdisciplinary study was envisioned, yielding not only useful insight but also a permanent competence base for future analyses of technological systems and technology policy in Sweden. Three leading Swedish research institutes were invited to participate: the Industrial Institute for Economic and Social Research in Stockholm, the Department ofIndustrial Management and Economics at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, and the Research Policy Institute at the University of Lund. I was invited to direct the project. The project group decided to focus initially on a particular technological system, namely factory automation, to be followed by similar studies of other systems. Numerous publications have resulted from the project thus far. The current volume represents a summary of our work on factory automation. It consists of several original essays and of some previously published papers which have been edited, in some cases substantially, in order to form a comprehensive and coherent picture of a technological system. To our knowledge, this is the first in-depth analysis of a technological system designed as a component of a systematic study of technological systems more generally. At the time of this writing, three further studies on electronics and computers, pharmaceuticals, and powder technology are under way, to be published in a later volume.

Normative Social Theory James M. Dean and A. M. C. Waterman University of Manitoba 1. Economics and Religion Once Again This hook is a sequel to Economics and Religion: Are They Distinct? (Brennan and Waterman 1994). That volume was motivated by a frustration born of many disappointing encounters between economists and theologians in the 1980s. Can bishops, synods, and other voices of organized religion bring any interesting (and disinterested) contribution to the public policy debate? If so, what is the relation of their contribution to that of the purely "secular" knowledge economists believe they can supply? Can economists bring any interesting (and disinterested) contribution to the public policy debate? If so, what is the relation of their contribution to the fundamental values that inform social ethics and that are still guarded to a large extent by religious tradition? All too often the two sides talked at cross-purposes. Well-intentioned economists coexisted for a few hours or days with well intentioned theologians whose manner of conceiving social reality was radically incompatible with their own. There seemed to be no common ground. The first requisite of any genuine conversation is an agreed conceptual framework that is able to accommodate the peculiar social vision both of the economist and of theologian, and to display the logical relation between the two."

R. H. Coase Duncan Black was a close and dear friend. A man of great simplicity, un worldly, modest, diffident, with no pretensions, he was devoted to scholarship. In his single-minded search for the truth, he is an example to us all. Black's first degree at the University of Glasgow was in mathematics and physics. Mathematics as taught at Glasgow seems to have been designed for engineers and did not excite him and he switched to economics, which he found more congenial. But it was not in a lecture in economics but in one on politics that he found his star. One lecturer, A. K. White, discussed the possibility of constructing a pure science of politics. This question caught his imagination, perhaps because of his earlier training in physics, and it came to absorb his thoughts for the rest of his life. But almost certainly nothing would have come of it were it not for his appointment to the newly formed Dundee School of Economics where the rest of the. teaching staff came from the London School of Economics. At Glasgow, economics, as in the time of Adam Smith, was linked with moral philosophy. At Dundee, Black was introduced to the analytical x The Theory o/Committees and Elections approach dominant at the London School of Economics. This gave him the approach he used in his attempt to construct a pure science of politics."

For people interested in risk management, medical activity represents a stimulating field of study and thought. On the one hand, progress in medical knowledge and technology tends to reduce the risks to survival that individuals would face in the absence of appropriate diagnostic or therapeutic instruments. On the other hand, new medical technologies simultaneously create their own specific risks, sometimes simply because their effects are less well-known than those of established ones. In a sense any medical progress simultaneously generates new risks while destroying old ones. Moreover, unlike many financial risks that can be either divided or transferred to others (e.g. through diversification, insurance or social security) the personal aspects of medical risks are by essence indivisible and non-transferable. As a result, they are in a sense more threatening than financial risks for risk averse patients. These two facts explain and justify the growing interest in risk economics for the fields of medical decision making and health economics. In Risk and Medical Decision Making, part 1 is developed inside the expected utility (E-U) model and analyses how comorbidity risks affect the well-known "test-treatment" thresholds. Part 2 is devoted to a specific non E-U model with the same purpose: how would one define a threshold in this context and how would one value a diagnostic test? In each of these two parts both diagnostic and therapeutic risks are considered.

Professor Sten Malmquist constructed the Malmquist quantity index and in doing so developed a distance function defined on a consumption space. This function is the consumer analog to the Shephard input distance function of producers and is used in ratio form to define the quantity index. This volume contains new contributions based on Malmquist's work nearly 50 years ago and provides modern perspectives on the value of this research.

The Structural Theory of Probability addresses the interpretation of probability, often debated in the scientific community. This problem has been examined for centuries; perhaps no other mathematical calculation suffuses mankind's efforts at survival as amply as probability. In the dawn of the 20th century David Hilbert included the foundations of the probability calculus within the most vital mathematical problems; Dr. Rocchi's topical and ever-timely volume proposes a novel, exhaustive solution to this vibrant issue. Paolo Rocchi, a versatile IBM scientist, outlines a new philosophical and mathematical approach inspired by well-tested software techniques. Through the prism of computer technology he provides an innovative view on the theory of probability. Dr. Rocchi discusses in detail the mathematical tools used to clarify the meaning of probability, integrating with care numerous examples and case studies. The comprehensiveness and originality of its mathematical development make this volume an inspiring read for researchers and students alike.

Corruption has been part of our economic and political life since ancient times. During the past few years, there has been a resurgence of interest in understanding the impact that corruption has on our societies. The objective of this volume is to stimulate further studies on corruption by providing a review of existing work in this field and raising some questions that warrant further research. Contributors to this volume synthesize studies dealing with various aspects of corruption and present some new questions regarding the origin and impact of corruption. Accordingly, this volume has two aims. First, it attempts to bring together essential elements of different approaches that have been used to understand corruption. Second, many of the contributors in this volume propose a shift in the focus of studies on corruption away from bribery-type activities to corruption that results in distortion of economic policies. Economics of Corruption seeks to define and model corruption. The contributions in this volume examine the political economy of corruption - that is, why it continues to exist - as well as its consequences, and what measures, if any, can be brought to bear on this phenomenon.

The Telecommunications Act of 1996 envisioned a competitive free-for-all in the U.S. telecommunications industry with removal of barriers to entry in local telecommunications markets and the lifting of the artificial restrictions that kept the Regional Bell Operating Companies (RBOCs) out of the interLATA long-distance market. After close to 5 years, only one RBOC has been granted permission (controversially) to enter the interLATA market, and local competition has yet to provide most consumers with meaningful choices. In addition, the wave of mergers across the industry has raised the specter of putting the former Bell System back together again. Policymakers now openly question whether the Act can deliver what it promised. Three principal themes are developed in this book. First, there has been a coordination failure between Congress and the FCC in translating the principles embodied in the Act into practice. The authors provide evidence for this by analyzing stock market reactions to legislative and regulatory actions. This coordination failure was largely predictable, given the ambiguity in the Act, as well as conflicting jurisdictions between the FCC and the states. Second, the Act calls for wholesale prices to be `based on cost.' Regulators adopted a costing standard (TELRIC) that provides a means to subsidize competitive entry in local telephone service markets. The ready adoption of the TELRIC standard by regulators is shown to be tied to the third theme: price cap regulation provides regulators with `insurance' against the adverse effects of competition in local telephone markets. Statistical analysis reveals that regulators in price cap states set uniformly lower unbundled network element prices (lower barriers to entry) in comparison with regulators in rate-of-return and earnings sharing states. The result is a triumph of regulatory processes over market processes - the antithesis of the purpose of the Act.

Studies in Consumer Demand - Econometric Methods Applied to Market Data contains eight previously unpublished studies of consumer demand. Each study stands on its own as a complete econometric analysis of demand for a well-defined consumer product. The econometric methods range from simple regression techniques applied in the first four chapters, to the use of logit and multinomial logit models used in chapters 5 and 6, to the use of nested logit models in chapters 6 and 7, and finally to the discrete/continuous modeling methods used in chapter 8. Emphasis is on applications rather than econometric theory. In each case, enough detail is provided for the reader to understand the purpose of the analysis, the availability and suitability of data, and the econometric approach to measuring demand.

Profits in the Long Run asks two questions: Are there persistent differences in profitability across firms? If so, what accounts for them? This book answers these questions using data for the 1000 largest US manufacturing firms in 1950 and 1972. It finds that there are persistent differences in profitability and market power across large US companies. Companies with persistently high profits are found to have high market shares and sell differentiated products. Mergers do not result in synergistic increases in profitability, but they do have an averaging effect. Companies with above normal profits have their profits lowered by mergers. Companies with initially below normal profits have them raised. In addition, the influence of other variables on long-run profitability, including risk, sales, diversification, growth and managerial control, is explored. The implications of antitrust policy are likewise addressed.

This study analyses the functioning of the peasant economy in Peru in the context of the present predominantly capitalist system. The central themes are the economic relationships of the peasantry to the rest of the economy of the country and the role of the peasant economy in the entire system, together with the changes that have taken place in that role over time. These themes are investigated by means of a study in detail of a sample of peasant communities in the most traditional and backward region of Peru, the southern sierra. The historical process has generated in Peru one of the most extreme cases of inequality, rural poverty and cultural duality. Nowhere else does the notion of 'economic duality' seem more applicable. Thus an investigation of the case of Peru has methodological value for the understanding of the peasant economy throughout Latin America, and the results of this survey have important implications for the whole region.

Amartya Sen "Equality," I spoke the word As if a wedding vow Ah, but I was so much older then, I am younger than that now. Thus sang Bob Dylan in 1964. Approbation of equality varies not only with our age (though it is not absolutely clear in which direction the values may shift over one's life time), but also with the spirit of the times. The 1960s were good years for singing in praise of equality. The spirit of the present times would probably be better reflected by melodies in admiration of the Federal Reserve System. And yet the technical literature on the evaluation and measurement of economic inequality has grown remarkably over the last three decades. Even as actual economic policies (especially in North America and Europe) have tended to move towards focusing on virtues other than the avoidance of economic inequality, the professional literature on assessing and gauging economic inequality has taken quite a jump forward. A great many different problems have been addressed and effectively sorted out, and new problems continue to be posed and analyzed. The Contents: A Review Jacques Silber has done a great service to the subject by producing this collection of admirablyhelpful and illuminating papers on different aspects of the measurement of income inequality. The reach of this collection is quite remarkable. Along with a thorough overview from the editor himself, the major areas in this complex field have been carefully examined and accessibly discussed.

Consumption takes place in settings or environments which have both direct and indirect effects on its dynamic path. Direct effects of environments on activities in consuming can occur through constraints that environments impose. Environment can also have indirect effects on consumption through enduring modification of internalized constructs which enter heuristics for decisions on activities. The importance of environments to consumption is increased by the definitional dependence of status on the judgements of others. This study examines microprocessing in consumer activities for status as it interacts with structure in the environments of these activities. The importance of environments in status activities provides the basis for a seperate, but related inquiry into observed differences in the form they take across societies. Conjecture on the consequences of differences in the structure of environments for consumption that typify a society is studied in the narrative statements by members of comparison societies and in the content of print advertising in these societies.Evolutionary processes which could establish observed differences in structure across societies are also considered in both their systematic and random components. I review models of random drift and stochastic resonance as candidate forms for generating observed structure in environments. Directions for the subsequent study of status through consumption are discussed.P * Introduction: Status Through Consumption; * Knowledge Use in Nonwork Activities for Status; * Interactions of Consumer Microprocessing and Structured Environments: Activity Feedback and the Stability of Structure; * Awards and Honors Systems in Structured Environments: Cross Societal Comparisons of Narrative Statements on Consuming for Status; * Comparative Analyses of Consumption Appeals in the Print Advertising of the USA and France, 1955-1991 * Random Process in the Generation of Structured Environments; * Overview and directions for Study of Status Through Consumption.