Penn Program on Regulation: Seminars
Spring 2008 - Risk Regulation Seminars
The Fels Institute of Government, Penn Program on Regulation, Program on Law, the Environment and the Economy, and the Wharton Risk Management and Decision Processes Center at the University of Pennsylvania invite you to attend a RISK REGULATION SEMINAR SERIESThe seminars provides a forum where scholars from across the University of Pennsylvania, along with interested colleagues, students, and friends from outside Penn, will come together to interact with the nation's leading scholars and policymakers working on issues related to catastrophic risks and their implications for public policy.
Tuesday, January 29, 2008 - “Hurricane Risk Perceptions: A Bayesian Approach”
Time: 4:30-6:00 p.m.
Location: G 50, Jon Huntsman Hall, The Wharton School
Speaker: David Kelly, Associate Professor of Economics and Chair of the Economics Department at the University of Miami
Topic: “Evolution of Subjective Hurricane Risk Perceptions: A Bayesian Approach”
Download Paper (PDF)
Details: In securities markets, traders make buy and sell decisions based on disparate sources of information. In turn, buy and sell decisions determine securities prices. Therefore, the price of a security represents the consensus estimate by all traders of the expected value of the assets secured by the security. Events markets are securities markets created to forecast events such as presidential elections, Nobel prizes, and quarterly sales figures. Events markets routinely outperform expert opinion, since the information aggregated from many traders often exceeds the information aggregated by a small group of experts. We have created an event market to forecast where hurricanes will land (the Hurricanes Futures Market or HFM), and recruited a group of meteorologists to trade. Using actual HFM trades, we estimate what information sources traders value the most and what information sources give the most accurate predictions. The results are useful for understanding how both experts and residents use hurricane forecasts.
A paper on this topic will be posted closer to the talk. Please see this link for more information on the topic: http://hurricanefutures.miami.edu. Click on the "FAQ" button for more information.
Tuesday, February 26, 2008 - “Decision Analysis for Homeland Security”
Time: 4:30-6:00 p.m.
Location: G 50, Jon Huntsman Hall, The Wharton School
Speaker: Detlof von Winterfeldt, University of Southern California,
Director, Homeland Security Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Terrorism Events (CREATE)
Topic: “Decision Analysis for Homeland Security”
Details: At this seminar, Detlof von Winterfeldt, the director of the Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Terrorism Events (CREATE), the first university-based center of excellence funded by the Department of Homeland Security, will offer a research framework for risk assessment, economic assessment, and risk management of terrorism. He will also present findings from three major analyses conducted by CREATE teams. The first analysis examined the risks and economic consequences of a major radiological attack on the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. The second analysis evaluated the cost-effectiveness of systems to counter surface to air missile attacks on commercial airplanes. The third analysis supported the Californian Governor’s Office of Homeland Security to allocate infrastructure protection funds. The seminar will conclude with lessons learned from applying decision and risk analysis to terrorism problems.
Tuesday, March 25, 2008 - “Evolved Altruism, Strong Reciprocity, and Perception of Risk”
Time: 4:30-6:00 p.m.
Location: G 50, Jon Huntsman Hall, The Wharton School
Speaker: Troy Tucker, Research Scientist, RAMAS Software, Applied Biomathematics
Topic: “Evolved Altruism, Strong Reciprocity, and Perception of Risk”
Download Paper (PDF)
Download Presentation Slides (PDF)
Details: Humans are endowed with specific physiological and psychological adaptations that respond well to risks that have recurred over our evolutionary history. However, the mind appears structured to use a mental calculus for reckoning uncertainty and making decisions that can be substantially different from probability theory, propositional
calculus (logic), or economic rationality (utility maximization). Experts relying on these normative concepts have documented many instances of patterned deviation; however, reliable predictions of public perception and effective communication techniques remain
elusive. In this seminar, Dr. Tucker will argue that significant progress towards predicting perception and communicating risk requires an explanatory framework explicitly informed by evolutionary theory. This approach expects mismatches between normative predictions and lay perception when evolved mental mechanisms encounter novel elements of the modern environment. However, when evolved mental mechanisms are functioning properly, lay-expert disagreement exposes the weaknesses of normative models and can provide a means to improve the fit between expert risk assessment and real risk.
Bio: W. Troy Tucker is a human ecologist and anthropologist. He received a B.A. from the University of Utah and an M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of New Mexico. His past anthropological research includes a quantitative statistical study of the demography of New Mexican men (supported by a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship) and quantitative demographic and ethnographic studies among a hunter-gatherer population in Venezuela, an agricultural village in Tanzania, and swidden agriculturalists in Madagascar. At Applied Biomathematics he is a research scientist and project manager. His research has spanned many areas in risk analysis, uncertainty propagation, and human perception of risks and uncertainties, including work in human and ecological risk assessments for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, developing extreme engineering uncertainty propagation tools for NASA, and uncertainty visualization and analysis technology for the pharmaceutical industry. He organized a National Science Foundation workshop on risk perception and communication and is editing the forthcoming proceedings for the New York Academy of Sciences.
The Risk Regulation seminar series is jointly sponsored by the Penn Program on Regulation, the Program on Law, the Environment and the Economy, the Wharton Risk Management & Decision Processes Center, the Institute for Global Environmental Leadership, and the Fels Institute of Government. Support from the Office of the Provost is gratefully acknowledged.
Spring 2008 - Environmental Practice Colloquiums
Wednesday, March 19, 2008 - The Role of Enforcement in Environmental Law
Time: 3:00-4:20 p.m.
Location: Gittis Hall, 213
Speaker: Jon Silberman, Senior Attorney, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance
Monday, March 31, 2008 - Environmental Law and Corporate Transactional Practice
Time: 3:00-4:20 p.m.
Location: Gittis Hall, 213
Speaker: Jeffrey A. Smith, Partner, Cravath, Swaine & Moore
Monday, April 14, 2008 - The Role of the Lawyer in Corporate Environmental Management
Time: 3:00-4:20 p.m.
Location: Gittis Hall, 213
Speaker: Leslie Carothers, President, Environmental Law Institute, and formerly Vice President for Environment, Health & Safety, United Technologies
View Past Seminars
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