The economics of global environmental risk

This chapter focusses on global environmental risks such as climate change, an issue that must be confronted as we move into the future. It proposes sound principles of risk management that make sense in today's society generally, going beyond their role of averting and hedging climate risks. This chapter is about these and related questions. In attempting to answer them, it deals with different aspects of the theory of risk-bearing. I explain current responses to global change, focusing on the new challenges: human-induced or endogenous risks, including potentially catastrophic risks, which are not adequately treated by traditional economic analysis. In summary, we are dealing with risks that have two major new characteristics: they are endogenous and potentially catastrophic. In addition, climate risks have three more conventional features: they are poorly understood, correlated and irreversible. In all cases, this chapter proposes ways to advance our understanding of the problems. This chapter proposes ways to evaluate decisions under endogenous and potentially catastrophic risks, and incorporates often neglected features of correlated, poorly understood and irreversible risks. The analysis proposed here opens new ways of thinking and at the same time poses new challenges. At the end I indicate new areas of research.risk; global environment; climate change; endogenous risk; catastrophic risk; risk management; mathematical modeling; endogenous uncertainty; policy

Project Organizational Culture Framework in Construction Industry

Project organizational culture (POC) has been recognized as a significant influencing factor of the success or failure of a project. Although numerous studies on this topic have been conducted to develop organizational culture models, these have mainly been for generic business settings, and one has not yet been developed for construction organizations at the project level. The aim of this chapter was to perform this task in Vietnam. A case study shows that cultural artifacts were arranged into a five-factor project organizational culture framework: “Project goal setting,” “Contractor assurance,” “Cooperative emphasis,” “Empowerment assignment,” and “Workforce emphasis.” The chapter’s findings suggest that the construction contracting organizations are more focused on the culture of mission and adaptability, with a relatively higher emphasis on clear project goals and contractor assurance. They favored a culture of involvement less, with a relatively lower emphasis on empowerment and workforce

Uncertainty and risk: politics and analysis

In environmental and sustainable development policy issues, and in infrastructural megaprojects and issues of innovative medical technologies as well, public authorities face emergent complexity, high value diversity, difficult-to-structure problems, high decision stakes, high uncertainty, and thus risk. In practice, it is believed, this often leads to crises, controversies, deadlocks, and policy fiascoes. Decision-makers are said to face a crisis in coping with uncertainty. Both the cognitive structure of uncertainty and the political structure of risk decisions have been studied. So far, these scientific literatures exist side by side, with few apparent efforts at theoretically conceptualizing and empirically testing the links between the two. Therefore, this exploratory and conceptual paper takes up the challenge: How should we conceptualize the cognitive structure of uncertainty? How should we conceptualize the political structure of risk? How can we conceptualize the link(s) between the two? Is there any empirical support for a conceptualization that bridges the analytical and political aspects of risk? What are the implications for guidelines for risk analysis and assessment

The Implications of Psychological Research Related to Unconscious Discrimination and Implicit Bias in Proving Intentional Discrimination

Building on the psychological research and publications indicating that much discrimination is unconscious and the result of implicit bias, this Article addresses the utility of laws that prohibit intentional discrimination in addressing this recently understood form of discrimination. More specifically, does unconscious discrimination violate a statute that prohibits intentional discrimination? The Article argues that the answer is yes.Unconscious discrimination is the result of stereotyping or categorization, a cognitive mechanism used by most people to simplify the task of perceiving, processing and retaining information about people. Absent a special effort to overcome this cognitive mechanism in making decisions about people, such decisions are frequently made on the basis of the category into which the decisionmaker places the person, rather than an individualized assessment. When a decisionmaker chooses to base decisions on the category into which an individual falls, rather than an individual assessment, the decisionmaker has made an intentional choice. Thus, the argument advanced here is that the intentional decision to discriminate is made when a decisionmaker chooses to use categories rather than an individual assessment, not at the precise point where a specific decision is made. Therefore, while a specific decision to hire or fire may not be the result of intentional discrimination at the point where the decision is made, it is, nevertheless, the product of intentional discrimination because at some point the decisionmaker decided to base decisions on categories rather than an individual assessment.The Article also discusses the common proof schemes for disparate treatment claims, including the direct method, the indirect method (McDonnell-Douglas) and mixed-motive. When the direct method is properly understood to include circumstantial evidence, it becomes the dominant method of establishing intentional discrimination. The key to proving intentional discrimination is showing that the decisionmaker engages in stereotyping and a likely way to establish this is through comments made by the decisionmaker, not necessarily in the context of the challenged decision. Once it is established that the decisionmaker engages in stereotyping and has a negative view of persons in the challenger\u27s protected group, the burden of persuasion should shift to the one whose decision is being challenged to establish an affirmative defense. What constitutes an affirmative defense, and the effect of such a defense, is explained in the Article.Understanding how discrimination works, will help guide organizations that want to eliminate all discrimination, including unconscious discrimination. Once discrimination is better understood, preventive measures can be tailored to addressing the problem

"Obedient Servant or Runaway Eurocracy? Delegation, Agency, and Agenda Setting in the European Community"

Do supranational institutions matter - do they deserve the status of an independent causal variable - in EC policymaking? Does the Commission matter? Does the European Court of Justice? Does the European Parliament? Is the European Community characterized by continued member state dominance, or by a runaway Commission and an activist Court progressively chipping away at this dominance? These are some of the most important questions for our understanding of the European Community and of European integration, and have divided the two traditional schools of thought in regional integration, with neofunctionalists [Haas 1958; Lindberg & Scheingold 1970] generally asserting, and intergovernmentalists [Hoffmann 1966; Taylor 1983; Moravcsik 1991, 1993] generally denying, any important causal role for supranational institutions in the integration process. By and large, however, neither neofunctionalism nor intergovernmentalism1 has generated testable hypotheses regarding the conditions under which, and the ways in which, supranational institutions exert an independent causal influence on either EC governance or the process of European integration. This paper presents a unified theoretical approach to the problem of supranational influence, based largely on the new institutionalism in rational choice theory. Simplifying only slightly, this new literature can be traced to Shepsle's [1979] pioneering work on the role of institutions in the US Congress. Beginning with the observation by McKelvey [1976], Riker [1980] and others that, in a system of majoritarian decisionmaking, policy choices are inherently unstable, "cycling" among multiple possible equilibria, Shepsle argued that Congressional institutions, and in particular the committee system, could produce structure-induced equilibrium, by ruling some policy alternatives as permissible or impermissible, and by structuring the voting and veto power of the various actors in the decisionmaking process