IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/ecolec/v69y2010i10p1964-1972.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The role of ambiguity in the evaluation of the net benefits of the MOSE system in the Venice lagoon

Author

Listed:
  • Fontini, Fulvio
  • Umgiesser, Georg
  • Vergano, Lucia

Abstract

Several environmental problems are complicated by ambiguity. Sea-level rise following climate change is one relevant example. In this paper, we apply a decision-making approach specifically designed to deal with ambiguity in order to evaluate the net benefits of the mobile barriers system (MOSE), which aims to protect the Venice Lagoon from periodic flooding. We show that the estimated impacts crucially depend on the level of optimism and pessimism of the decision maker and substantially differ from those calculated on the basis of the expected value. We also calculate the implicit ambiguity attitude of the decision maker.

Suggested Citation

  • Fontini, Fulvio & Umgiesser, Georg & Vergano, Lucia, 2010. "The role of ambiguity in the evaluation of the net benefits of the MOSE system in the Venice lagoon," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(10), pages 1964-1972, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:ecolec:v:69:y:2010:i:10:p:1964-1972
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921-8009(10)00198-9
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Basili, Marcello & Chateauneuf, Alain & Fontini, Fulvio, 2008. "Precautionary principle as a rule of choice with optimism on windfall gains and pessimism on catastrophic losses," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 67(3), pages 485-491, October.
    2. Wakker, Peter P, 2001. "Testing and Characterizing Properties of Nonadditive Measures through Violations of the Sure-Thing Principle," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 69(4), pages 1039-1059, July.
    3. Chateauneuf, Alain & Eichberger, Jurgen & Grant, Simon, 2007. "Choice under uncertainty with the best and worst in mind: Neo-additive capacities," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 137(1), pages 538-567, November.
    4. Sarin, Rakesh K & Wakker, Peter, 1992. "A Simple Axiomatization of Nonadditive Expected Utility," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 60(6), pages 1255-1272, November.
    5. Stern,Nicholas, 2007. "The Economics of Climate Change," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521700801, October.
    6. Marcello Basili & Alain Chateauneuf & Fulvio Fontini, 2005. "Choices Under Ambiguity With Familiar And Unfamiliar Outcomes," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 58(2), pages 195-207, March.
    7. Hans-Werner Sinn, 1980. "A Rehabilitation of the Principle of Insufficient Reason," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 94(3), pages 493-506.
    8. Tversky, Amos & Kahneman, Daniel, 1992. "Advances in Prospect Theory: Cumulative Representation of Uncertainty," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 5(4), pages 297-323, October.
    9. Schmeidler, David, 1989. "Subjective Probability and Expected Utility without Additivity," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 57(3), pages 571-587, May.
    10. Chichilnisky, Graciela, 2000. "An axiomatic approach to choice under uncertainty with catastrophic risks," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 22(3), pages 221-231, July.
    11. Sarin, Rakesh K & Wakker, Peter, 1992. "A Simple Axiomatization of Nonadditive Expected Utility," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 60(6), pages 1255-1272, November.
    12. Quiggin, John, 1982. "A theory of anticipated utility," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 3(4), pages 323-343, December.
    13. Michael Kilka & Martin Weber, 2001. "What Determines the Shape of the Probability Weighting Function Under Uncertainty?," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 47(12), pages 1712-1726, December.
    14. Gilboa, Itzhak & Schmeidler, David, 1989. "Maxmin expected utility with non-unique prior," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(2), pages 141-153, April.
    15. Itzhak Gilboa, 2004. "Uncertainty in Economic Theory," Post-Print hal-00756317, HAL.
    16. Salman, Khalik & Arnesson, Leif & Sörensson, Anna & Shukur, Ghazi, 2009. "Estimating the Swedish and Norwegian International Tourism Demand using ISUR Technique," Working Paper Series in Economics and Institutions of Innovation 198, Royal Institute of Technology, CESIS - Centre of Excellence for Science and Innovation Studies.
    17. Paulo A.L.D. Nunes & Margaretha Breil & Gretel Gambarelli, 2005. "Economic Valuation of On Site Material Damages of High Water on Economic Activities based in the City of Venice: Results from a Dose-Response-Expert-Based Valuation Approach," Working Papers 2005.53, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei.
    18. Daniel Ellsberg, 1961. "Risk, Ambiguity, and the Savage Axioms," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 75(4), pages 643-669.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Caporin, Massimiliano & Fontini, Fulvio, 2014. "The Value of Protecting Venice from the Acqua Alta Phenomenon under Different Local Sea Level Rises," MPRA Paper 53779, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Francesco Angelini & Paolo Figini & Veronica Leoni, 2024. "High tide, low price? Flooding alerts and hotel prices in Venice," Tourism Economics, , vol. 30(4), pages 876-899, June.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ludwig, Alexander & Zimper, Alexander, 2006. "Investment behavior under ambiguity: The case of pessimistic decision makers," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 52(2), pages 111-130, September.
    2. Alexander Zimper, 2011. "Do Bayesians Learn Their Way Out of Ambiguity?," Decision Analysis, INFORMS, vol. 8(4), pages 269-285, December.
    3. Zimper, Alexander, 2009. "Half empty, half full and why we can agree to disagree forever," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 71(2), pages 283-299, August.
    4. Jürgen Eichberger & David Kelsey & Burkhard C. Schipper, 2009. "Ambiguity and social interaction," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 61(2), pages 355-379, April.
    5. Olivier L’Haridon & Lætitia Placido, 2010. "Betting on Machina’s reflection example: an experiment on ambiguity," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 69(3), pages 375-393, September.
    6. repec:ebl:ecbull:v:4:y:2006:i:2:p:1-15 is not listed on IDEAS
    7. Jürgen Eichberger & David Kelsey & Burkhard C. Schipper, 2009. "Ambiguity and social interaction," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 61(2), pages 355-379, April.
    8. repec:awi:wpaper:0448 is not listed on IDEAS
    9. Alexander Ludwig & Alexander Zimper, 2004. "Rational Expectations and Ambiguity: A Comment on Abel," MEA discussion paper series 04066, Munich Center for the Economics of Aging (MEA) at the Max Planck Institute for Social Law and Social Policy.
    10. Mohammed Abdellaoui & Horst Zank, 2023. "Source and rank-dependent utility," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 75(4), pages 949-981, May.
    11. Izhakian, Yehuda, 2017. "Expected utility with uncertain probabilities theory," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 91-103.
    12. Zimper, Alexander, 2012. "Asset pricing in a Lucas fruit-tree economy with the best and worst in mind," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 36(4), pages 610-628.
    13. Webb, Craig S. & Zank, Horst, 2011. "Accounting for optimism and pessimism in expected utility," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 47(6), pages 706-717.
    14. Adam Dominiak & Jean-Philippe Lefort, 2021. "Ambiguity and Probabilistic Information," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 67(7), pages 4310-4326, July.
    15. Mohammed Abdellaoui & Olivier L’Haridon & Horst Zank, 2010. "Separating curvature and elevation: A parametric probability weighting function," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 41(1), pages 39-65, August.
    16. Alexander Zimper, 2011. "Re-examining the law of iterated expectations for Choquet decision makers," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 71(4), pages 669-677, October.
    17. Jürgen Eichberger & David Kelsey, 2014. "Optimism And Pessimism In Games," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 55(2), pages 483-505, May.
    18. Marcello Basili, 2006. "A Rational Decision Rule with Extreme Events," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 26(6), pages 1721-1728, December.
    19. Burkhard C. Schipper, 2021. "The evolutionary stability of optimism, pessimism, and complete ignorance," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 90(3), pages 417-454, May.
    20. Aurélien Baillon & Han Bleichrodt & Umut Keskin & Olivier l’Haridon & Chen Li, 2018. "The Effect of Learning on Ambiguity Attitudes," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 64(5), pages 2181-2198, May.
    21. Dominiak, Adam & Eichberger, Jürgen & Lefort, Jean-Philippe, 2012. "Agreeable trade with optimism and pessimism," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 64(2), pages 119-126.
    22. Katarzyna M. Werner & Horst Zank, 2019. "A revealed reference point for prospect theory," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 67(4), pages 731-773, June.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Decision making under ambiguity NEO-capacity Venice MOSE Acqua alta;

    JEL classification:

    • D81 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Criteria for Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty
    • Q51 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Valuation of Environmental Effects
    • Q54 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Climate; Natural Disasters and their Management; Global Warming

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:ecolec:v:69:y:2010:i:10:p:1964-1972. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/ecolecon .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.