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The goal of our paper is to demonstrate the potential effects of a tax on paying a ransom on the incentives of stakeholders involved: both the perpetrators (the attackers placing the ransomware) as well as the potential victim. We do think that there is a case for a ransom tax, but we do also realise that it is not easy to make that case, and hence we express this doubt in our title. A tax could stimulate ex ante cybersecurity and also (when price elasticity is not too low) reduce ex post ransom payments. In addition, a tax in combination with a smartly designed subsidy could have benefits.

The potential of artificial intelligence (AI) has grown exponentially in recent years, which not only generates value but also creates risks. AI systems are characterised by their complexity, opacity and autonomy in operation. Now and in the foreseeable future, AI systems will be operating in a manner that is not fully autonomous. This signifies that providing appropriate incentives to the human parties involved is still of great importance in reducing AI-related harm. Therefore, liability rules should be adapted in such a way to provide the relevant parties with incentives to efficiently reduce the social costs of potential accidents. Relying on a law and economics approach, we address the theoretical question of what kind of liability rules should be applied to different parties along the value chain related to AI. In addition, we critically analyse the ongoing policy debates in the European Union, discussing the risk that European policymakers will fail to determine efficient liability rules with regard to different stakeholders.

In a world of rising long-term risks and their ensuing syndromes, the mitigation and financing of long-term risks are therefore arguably some of the most critical issues facing society. However, long-term thinking involving future generations draws limited attention in current political and social systems. Private insurance has received increased attention due to its expert role in risk management and its risk transfer mechanisms, and it has played an important role in dealing with some types of long-term risk, such as floods and earthquakes. Increasingly, insurance also contributes to disaster mitigation through regulating the conduct of policyholders by creating incentives for policyholders to counter short-termism and invest in reduction measures regarding long-term risks. In addition, it has been shown that supply-side problems and behavioural anomalies make it difficult to insure against long-term risks. Innovative long-term insurance solutions and a combination of public and private partnerships are proposed to overcome these restrictions.

Although the tale about tort law and risks is almost as old as time itself, the concept of judge-made risk regulation is an odd one out in the world of tort law scholarship. Traditionally, tort law practitioners and (most) scholars understand the tort law system as an individual dispute resolution mechanism with its very raison d’etre to do justice in a bipolar relationship between the plaintiff and the defendant.1 According to this conception, tort law offers a victim the possibility to hold the wrongdoer accountable for his alleged wrongful behavior and when he or she does so, a civil judge allocates the responsibilities in relation to the risks involved between the proceeding parties.2 The judge determines the extent to which the plaintiff or the defendant is ex ante responsible for the management of the risk and whether the defendant ex post has to compensate the victim for the costs of the negative consequences of a risk that has materialised. [...]

Private liability can potentially play a crucial role in protecting critical infrastructure. Traditional liability rules will especially play their deterrent and therefore preventive effect in the case of so-called man-made “technological” disasters. By using a strict liability role and by providing solvency guarantees potential tort-feasors can be provided with incentives to take optimal preventivemeasures.However, the case of nuclear accidents, addressed inmore detail, makes clear that in practice those efficient liability rules that would be needed to generate this preventive effect are often not implemented at the legislative level. The legislator rather imposes financial limits on liability and provides for public funding, thus effectively granting a subsidy to operators. Those type of inefficient rules laid down in international conventions are obviously often the result of interest group politics.As far as natural disasters are concerned liability rules can play less of a role given the fact that those are considered an “act of God”. One could then only consider public authority liability.However, this is not often accepted in practice and there may also be theoretical reasons to be careful with the imposition of public authority liability. Public authorities are multitask agents which need a substantial amount of discretion. That explains that many legal systems award (partial) immunity from liability to public authorities. This leads generally to the conclusion that although liability rules can play a role in the protection of critical infrastructure those rules may have important limits as well. As a result the primary instrument to protect critical infrastructure will in practice often be safety regulation rather than liability rules.

In order to secure their fishery products market share in the EU, third countries, especially the developing ones, tend to transplant EU requirements into their domestic legal order. In reality, theses transplanted laws do not correspond to measures to reach a level of protection needed by the country of destination. Based upon the case of Benin, this paper intends to show that when these legal transplants are adversely made, they can in some cases have disastrous effects. It can be argued that an unintended result of EU policy was that it contributed to the collapse of the shrimp industry in Benin. The paper moreover argues that despite the stringency of the EU requirements, the implementation of its control policy might inadequately protect European consumers of shrimp.