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Article Dans Une Revue Environmental and Resource Economics Année : 2019

Optimists, Pessimists, and the Precautionary Principle

Meglena Jeleva
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Stéphane Rossignol

Résumé

The precautionary principle has emerged as a leading guide to public decision-making about environmental risks under irreversibility and uncertainty. In this paper, we adopt a two-period model with irreversibility and agents differentiated by their degree of optimism to character-ize the conditions under which the precautionary principle applies. We show in particular that it is more often applied if the decision-maker has an intermediate optimism index, if scientific research is more effective at reducing uncertainty, and if the same decision-maker makes the decisions for both periods. Moreover, we show that socially optimal decisions lead to apply the precautionary principle more often than an elected decision-maker does.

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Dates et versions

hal-02047321 , version 1 (24-02-2019)

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  • HAL Id : hal-02047321 , version 1

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Meglena Jeleva, Stéphane Rossignol. Optimists, Pessimists, and the Precautionary Principle. Environmental and Resource Economics, 2019. ⟨hal-02047321⟩
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