Featuring real world examples of how risk information affects public choices, The Economics of Environmental Risk expertly demonstrates that policymakers need to consider how people learn about those risks. Offering insights into examples such as hazardous waste, radon, smoking, hurricanes and terrorist threats over the past four decades, this intuitive book illustrates environmental risks and the choices made to mitigate the potential effects. Providing a deep dive into how public policies and information affect private choices, this book highlights the successes and failings of these choices, recognising how decisions made can have an influence on the hazards that are faced. It also focuses on important lessons to be learnt by officials providing information on risk and designing policies for managing them. Further consideration is also given to how experts understand these risks and how the public interprets the information provided. Scholars and students of public policy, risk analysis and environmental and resource economics will value the useful examples found in this informative volume. Policymakers in risk and insurance, and risk management programs will also find this an instructive guide on the ever-changing environmental risks we face.

The opening of the National September 11th Memorial and Museum in 2014 marks a new era of reflection toward enhancing homeland security regulation in the United States. In the context of this new era, it is necessary to consider how policy intended to reinforce homeland security is evaluated.Benefit-Cost Analyses for Security Policies describes how to undertake the evaluation of security policies within the framework of benefit cost analysis and offers a unique contribution to analysis of homeland security regulations in the United States. The authors outline how established procedures for benefit-cost analysis must adapt to meet challenges posed by current security policy, through examining specific security related regulations. The logic of risk assessment, selection of a discount rate, valuation of travelers' time when delayed due to screening, valuation of changes in risks of injury or death, and impacts of terrorist events on the economy as a whole are among the issues discussed. An outline of the research and policy evaluation steps needed to build robust benefit-cost methods to evaluate security related regulations in the future is presented in the book. A series of examples is offered to illustrate how new security regulations should be reassessed to ensure resources are not wasted. Policy analysts will benefit from the insight drawn on how to evaluate homeland security regulation in the United States. Academic researchers interested in homeland security policy evaluation will find this book valuable and informative. Postgraduate students of public policy or applied economics will find examples of the challenges in using the methods of benefit-cost analysis in this new area for policy evaluation. Contributors include: K. Boyle, C. Dockins, S. Farrow, A. Hashemi, M. Jones-Lee, S. Kaul, M.E. Kahn, S. Kaul, X. Li, C. Mansfield, K.E. McConnell, A. Rose, V. K. Smith, W.K. Viscusi, W. Wheeler

Estimating Economic Values for Nature presents, in one volume, a collection of V. Kerry Smith's papers prepared over 25 years, dealing with the theory and practice of non-market valuation for environmental resources. Taken together, the papers explore the conceptual basis, the implementation process and empirical performance of all available methods of measuring economic values for the services of nature and how these values are constructed from people's choices. The issues discussed in this volume include travel cost, recreation demand, averting behaviour, household production, hedonic property value, hedonic wage and contingent valuation methods. These essays describe what has been learned from past benefit analysis, using meta-analysis, as well as the issues at the frontiers of current research in the area. This important volume will be welcomed by environmental and public economists, as well as practitioners of cost-benefit analysis, as an authoritative and comprehensive discussion of non-market valuation.