Homeland security: a case study in risk aversion for public decision-making
نویسندگان
چکیده
Governments and their regulatory agencies normally exhibit risk-neutral attitudes in their decision-making. However, for low probability-high consequence events many decision-makers tend to be risk-averse because of the catastrophic or dire nature of the hazard or event. The degree of risk averseness can be described by utility theory. This paper will infer utility functions that reflect the level of risk averseness of regulatory agencies when adopting new safety measures – such as investing $75 billion per year of the homeland security budget to avert terrorist attacks in the USA. The utility analysis considers threat probability, risk reduction caused by regulatory action, cost of regulatory action, and losses. The expected utilities using an identical risk-averse utility function for: 1 no enhanced security expenditure 2 regulatory action associated with $75 billion of enhanced homeland security expenditure are compared and made equal to each other by modifying the risk-averse utility function. This means that both policy options are equally preferable so if the decision-maker is more risk-averse than suggested by the risk-averse utility function then regulatory action is preferable. It will be shown that the level of risk averseness needed to justify current expenditures for homeland security is considerable. 368 M.G. Stewart et al.
منابع مشابه
Risk premiums and certainty equivalents of loss-averse newsvendors of bounded utility
Loss-averse behavior makes the newsvendors avoid the losses more than seeking the probable gains as the losses have more psychological impact on the newsvendor than the gains. In economics and decision theory, the classical newsvendor models treat losses and gains equally likely, by disregarding the expected utility when the newsvendor is loss-averse. Moreover, the use of unbounded utility to m...
متن کاملA value model for evaluating homeland security decisions.
One of the most challenging tasks of homeland security policymakers is to allocate their limited resources to reduce terrorism risks cost effectively. To accomplish this task, it is useful to develop a comprehensive set of homeland security objectives, metrics to measure each objective, a utility function, and value tradeoffs relevant for making homeland security investments. Together, these el...
متن کاملEffect of Cognitive Biases on Rationality of Economic Decision Making under Risk among Students of Shahid Beheshti University
The purpose of this study is to determine the quality of individual economic decision making under risk and uncertainty. The research method is a quasi-experiment with single group and a post-test. The total population of the students of Shahid Beheshti University in 97 was 8.700 and due to non-normal distribution, we should use non-parametric Wilcoxon test, with sample of 180. The tool used to...
متن کاملInsurer Optimal Asset Allocation in a Small and Closed Economy: The Case of Iran’s Social Security Organization
We seek to determine the optimal amount of the insurer’s investment in all types of assets for a small and closed economy. The goal is to detect the implications and contributions the risk seeker and risk aversion insurer commonly make and the effectiveness in the investment decision. Also, finding the optimum portfolio for each is the main goal of the present study. To this end, we adopted the...
متن کاملAviation Security, Risk Assessment, and Risk Aversion for Public Decisionmaking
This paper estimates risk reductions for each layer of security designed to prevent commercial passenger airliners from being commandeered by terrorists, kept under control for some time, and then crashed into specific targets. Probabilistic methods are used to characterize the uncertainty of rates of deterrence, detection, and disruption, as well as losses. Since homeland security decisionmake...
متن کامل