Stephane Hallegatte () (CIRED - Centre international de recherche sur l'environnement et le développement - CIRAD : UMR56 - CNRS : UMR8568 - Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales - Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées - Ecole Nationale du Génie Rural des Eaux et des Forêts)
Additional information is available for the following
registered author(s):
In the early stages of rebuilding New Orleans, a decision has to be made on the level of flood protection the city should implement. Such decisions are usually based on cost-benefit analyses. But in such an analysis, the results are contingent on a number of underlying assumptions and varying these assumptions can lead to different recommendations. Indeed, though a standard first-order analysis rules out category 5 hurricane protection, taking into account climate change and other human-related disruptions of environment, second-order impacts of large-scale disasters, possible changes in the discount rate, risk aversion and damage heterogeneity may make such a hurricane protection a rational investment, even if countervailing risks and moral hazard issues are included in the analysis. These results stress the high sensitivity of the CBA recommendation to several uncertain assumptions, highlight the importance of second-order costs and damage heterogeneity in welfare losses, and show how climate change creates an additional layer of uncertainty in infrastructure design that increases the probability of either under-adaptation (and increased risk) or over-adaptation (and sunk costs).
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by HAL in its series Post-Print with number
hal-00164628_v1.
Length: Date of creation: 01 Mar 2006 Date of revision: Publication status: Published, AEI-Brookings Joint Center. Regulatory Analysis, 2006, 06-02 Handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-00164628_v1
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: http://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00164628/en/ Contact details of provider: Web page: http://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its listing, contact: (CCSD).