Formalization and Applications of the Precuationary Principle

A formalization of the Precuationary Principle is given here: We formalize scientific knowledge on the likelihood of events in the state space and the concepts of scientifically unambiguous events and acts. We gie a definition of non-precautionary social planner as a Savage Expected Utility maximizer who evaluates acts relativ to a baseline, called “business as usual”, and who disregards scientifically ambguous acts, and we show that, for a wide class of preferences for the representative agent, non-r-precautionary decision making is sub-optimal. A discussion of this formalization is given in the context of national and international debates on Precaution, in the fields of Climate Change, of WTO arbitrages, and of the safety regulations of chemical products.