When seeking new leaders, business and government organizations alike often need individuals that are less risk averse, or even risk-seeking, in order to improve performance. However, individuals amenable to increased risktaking may be more likely to engage in misconduct. To study this issue, we explore US political scandals and the implicated politicians’portfolio choices. We find that a polit...

Research from across disciplines has demonstrated that social and political contextual factors at the national and subnational levels can impact the health and health behavior risks of individuals. This paper examines the impact of state-level social capital and ideology on individual-level health outcomes in the U.S. Leveraging the variation that exists across states in the U.S., the results r...

points z z In a historic reversal of fortunes, China is overtaking the territory of the former Soviet Union in GDP per capita. z z China's rapid economic development has been driven by 'regionally decentralized authoritarianism' (RDA). But only the economy is decentralized. Political centralization, the objectives and patronage of the centre, and the centre's relative performance evaluation are...

We examine new survey data on attitudes towards international trade showing that women are significantly less likely than men to support increasing trade with foreign nations. This gender difference remains large even when controlling for a broad range of other demographic and socio-economic characteristics among survey respondents. And the gender gap widens markedly among older and married res...

Resilience has emerged as a policy response in an era of public concern about disasters and risks that include fear of terrorism and environmental or economic catastrophe. Resilience is both a refreshing and a problematic concept. It is refreshing in that it creates new opportunities for interdisciplinary research and vividly reminds us that the material world matters in our social lives, polit...

Three decades ago, at the height of the public controversy over nuclear power, many scientists and engineers were quick to pronounce that the activists who were opposed to this new and supposedly safe and clean form of energy production were acting irrationally. The scientists’ argument—and source of bewilderment— was the fact that while many protesters accepted high risks for themselves, such ...

This paper looks at the EU’s role in designing viable policy solutions that may help modern welfare states to cope with the challenge posed by the emergence of “new social risks”. As an important example, we analyse the impact of one specific European policy, the Parental Leave Directive. We focus on both the European decision-making and the domestic implementation process in all 15 member-stat...

In Part I of this article, I examined the role of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in drug approval and then detailed the known risks of medical marijuana (any form of Cannabis sativa used--usually by smoking--to treat a wide variety of pathologic states and diseases). Part II of the article will begin by reviewing the benefits of Cannabis sativa as documented by well designed scientific ...

With a political debate about the potential risks and benefits of cannabis use as a backdrop, the wave of legalization and liberalization initiatives continues to spread. Four states (Colorado, Washington, Oregon, and Alaska) and the District of Columbia have passed laws that legalized cannabis for recreational use by adults, and 23 others plus the District of Columbia now regulate cannabis use...

Contents 1. Introduction 2. The need for policy instruments 3. The Range of Policy Options 4. The Selection and Design of Policy Instruments 4.1. Efficiency with heterogeneous abatement costs 4.2. Difficult monitoring of emissions (but complementarity with products) 4.3. Efficiency with heterogeneous damage costs 4.4. Uncertainty in damage costs and efficiency 4.5. Inter-temporal efficiency wit...