Risk Management and Decision Processes Center

Upcoming conferences and roundtables:

Risk Regulation Seminar Series: The Wharton Risk Management and Decision Processes Center in conjunction with the Fels Institute of Government, Penn Program on Regulation; and Program on Law, the Environment and the Economy, with support from the Office of the Provost, host an interdisciplinary seminar series on risk regulation. Additional information is available on the seminar website.

Risk Regulation Seminars 4:30 – 6:00 pm Room G50, Huntsman Hall, 3730 Walnut Street Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania Seminars are free and open to the public Fall 2011 Tuesday, October 25 Dan M. Kahan, Elizabeth K. Dollard Professor of Law, Yale Law School "The Tragedy of the Risk-Perception Commons: Culture Conflict, Rationality Conflict, and Climate Change" The conventional explanation for controversy over climate change emphasizes impediments to public understanding: limited popular knowledge of science, the inability of ordinary citizens to assess technical information, and the resulting widespread use of unreliable cognitive heuristics to assess risk. In this seminar, Professor Dan Kahan reports results from a large survey of U.S. adults that found little support for the conventional account. On the whole, the most scientifically literate and numerate subjects were slightly less likely, not more, to see climate change as a serious threat than the least scientifically literate and numerate ones. More importantly, greater scientific literacy and numeracy were associated with greater cultural polarization: respondents predisposed by their values to dismiss climate change evidence became more dismissive, and those predisposed by their values to credit such evidence more concerned, as science literacy and numeracy increased. Professor Kahan will suggest that this evidence reflects a conflict between two levels of rationality: the individual level, which is characterized by the citizens’ effective use of their knowledge and reasoning capacities to form risk perceptions that express their cultural commitments, and the collective level, which is characterized by citizens’ failure to converge on the best available scientific evidence on how to promote their common welfare. Dispelling this “tragedy of the risk-perception commons,” he will argue, should be understood as the central aim of the science of science communication. Tuesday, November 29 Adam M. Finkel, Senior Fellow and Executive Director, Penn Program on Regulation Professor of Environmental and Occupational Health, UMDNJ School of Public Health "Out of Balance: How Uncertainty Figures in Risk Analysis and Regulatory Economics" Spring 2012 Tuesday, January 24 TBA Tuesday, February 21 Michael Greenstone, 3M Professor of Environmental Economics, MIT Tuesday, March 27 Paul Joskow, President, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation; Elizabeth and James Killian Professor of Economics, Emeritus, MIT

 

To view a list of past conferences click here