This paper studies the role of unemployment insurance in a sticky-price model that features an efficiency-wage view of the labor market based on unobservable effort. The risk-sharing mechanism central to the model permits, but does not force, agents to be fully insured. Structural parameters are estimated using a maximum-likelihood procedure on US data. Formal hypothesis tests reveal that the d...

Assessment of the health impacts of recreational water quality is a useful tool in developing appropriate policies. Risk assessment approaches are increasingly being used as a scientific rationale for risk management. This chapter describes the various methods used for identification and quantification of hazards in recreational water risk assessment. It also looks at how different factors infl...

Trade treaties have introduced the principle that similar risks should be treated similarly, and that countries must achieve internal consistency in the levels of protection they afford against certain hazards within their territories. The problem is that there is no agreement on when risks are “similar” or when levels of protection are “consistent.” The danger is that in resolving these issues...

Social and mobile computing open up new possibilities for integrating citizens’ information, knowledge, and social capital in emergency management (EM). This participation can improve the capacity of local agencies to respond to unexpected events by involving citizens not only as first line informants, but also as first responders. This participation could contribute to build resilient communit...

The paper provides novel insights on the effect of a firm’s risk management objective on the optimal design of risk transfer instruments. I analyze the interrelation between the structure of the optimal insurance contract and the firm’s objective to minimize the required equity it has to hold to accommodate losses in the presence of multiple risks and moral hazard. In contrast to the case of ri...

Recent research has begun to focus on the role of outside interventions in the duration of civil conflicts. Assuming that interventions are a form of conflict management, we would hold ex ante expectations that they would reduce a conflict’s expected duration. In this paper I test hypotheses relating the type and timing of outside interventions to the duration of civil conflicts. The data incor...

The traditional approach to demand response of paying for a customer’s electricity consumption reductions relative to an administratively set baseline is currently being advocated by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) as a way to foster the participation of final consumers in formal wholesale markets. Although these efforts may lead to greater participation of final consumers in tr...

Failures in critical infrastructures can cause major damage to society, and thus there is a need for a common approach to cross-sector risk analyses. This paper presents such an approach, which includes an extended preliminary hazard analysis and detailed risk analysis of electricity supply, carried out in a case study. The risk analysis approach constitutes an important basis for analyzing int...

Active Unemployment Insurance The paper argues that a comprehensive activation strategy is called for – in both unemployment and disability insurance – to minimize the conflict between income insurance and work incentives and to prevent the economic crisis from causing a long-lasting decline in labor force participation. A review of recent empirical evidence, particularly from the Scandinavian ...

Landslides are among the most damaging natural hazards in mountainous regions. In this study, landslide hazard zonation was conducted in the Baba Heydar Watershed using logistic statistical regression to determine landslide hazard areas. First, a landslide inventory map was prepared using aerial photograph interpretation and field surveys. Next, ten landslide conditioning factors including alti...