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Default options may provide a low-cost way of influencing behaviour without modifying incentives and constraining choices between alternatives. However, an improved understanding is needed on whether they are effective when individuals have experience with making the choice in practice and have preferences for specific alternatives. We study whether defaults can be used to increase insurance coverage against low-probability/high-impact risks, like floods, and whether past flood insurance purchases and flooding experience moderate the effect of defaults. Our study uses a naturally occurring difference in experience, comparing the surveyed flood insurance choices of 1,187 homeowners, half of whom are in the Netherlands, where flood insurance penetration rates are low and recent flooding caused minor losses, and the other half of whom are in the United Kingdom (UK), where the opposite is true. We find defaults are effective among homeowners with little to no flood-related experience: in the Netherlands defaults increase the likelihood of insuring by between 17 and 18 percentage points. Although there is no overall effect of defaults in the UK, defaults increase flood insurance coverage for risk averse individuals, and those who have no reported previous flood experience and have not purchased flood insurance. Anticipated regret about not having insurance coverage in the event of a flood, and perceptions about the insurance cost explain between 34 and 37 percent of the relationship between the default and flood insurance demand. We discuss policy implications of our findings.

Climate change adaptation strategies should anticipate that the 2020 situation which resembles an above average hurricane season coinciding with a pandemic may occur more frequently in the future. This study draws lessons on how individual hurricane preparedness is influenced by a pandemic, which turns out to be a combination of perceptions of flood and pandemic risks that have opposite effects on preparedness behavior. We conducted three waves of surveys during 2019-2020 to monitor hurricane preparedness activities in flood-prone coastal areas in Florida, including a survey of 600 respondents in early June 2020 to obtain insights into households’ risk perceptions and preparedness for this hurricane season under COVID-19. The results show that this hurricane season is dominated by concerns over COVID-19 which influences people’s evacuation intentions. Whereas hotel costs were the main obstacle to evacuating during Hurricane Dorian in 2019, the main evacuation obstacle identified in the 2020 hurricane season is COVID-19. Our statistical analyses that investigates the factors influencing evacuation intentions consistently show that older individuals are less likely to evacuate voluntarily, because they are concerned about becoming infected by COVID-19. We discuss the implications of our findings for adaptation policies that aim to improve hurricane preparedness in situations of a pandemic, such as risk communication and emergency management policies.

Many commentators claim Adam Smith failed to realize that no objective standard of value exists. Instead, he adhered to the labor theory of value. Like others, we argue that in the The Wealth of Nations Smith discussed the “early and rude state” in which the labor theory of value made some sense since labor and human circumstances were relatively simple and knowable. However, because the labor theory of value is only sensible in that special case, his description of the theory suggests its own insufficiency. With the emergence of the division of labor, labor heterogeneity and the waning know-ability of circumstances render the earlier analysis moot, but that is only implicit in the Wealth of Nations. So why does Smith exposit an analytically weak position? We suggest that Smith thought that his rhetorical use of the labor theory of value would advance his “liberal plan of equality, liberty, and justice.” The labor theory of value served as a rhetorical device to underpin his claims that the movement toward an economic system based on an extensive division of labor was a movement toward a better society without any systemic injustice in labor remuneration.

People react to Edward Snowden and his national security disclosures in radically different ways. Security hawks want his head and call him a traitor; privacy advocates think him a whistleblower and a national hero. This essay examines those positions and finds that there is a fundamental disconnect between them, which influences and prohibits an important national conversation concerning the scope of the NSA’s work, the laws under which it operates, and privacy rights of United States citizens. This essay concludes that the privacy advocates have the stronger interests, and that it is wildly inconsistent for the government to simultaneously seek Snowden’s prosecution at the same time it engages in substantive national-security legal reforms.

In some instances, the Indian trust doctrine attaches to federal agency policy documents and renders them judicially enforceable, a situation this paper terms the "binding guidance principle." This Principle is unique because it creates a narrow exception to the general exemption of nonlegislative rules from judicial enforcement under the Administrative Procedure Act. Therefore, under the Principle, federal common law — the Indian trust doctrine — sometimes trumps the APA. This paper examines the binding guidance principle's jurisprudence, and explores its origins, which courts have applied primarily to tribal consultation policies thus far. It then explains how and why the Principle may be ripe for expansion, as well as how it may prove a useful tool for Indian tribes to further their litigation goals outside of the consultation context. Accordingly, this paper explains how tribes might use the Principle to protect themselves from adverse agency action by holding agencies responsible for their guidance documents in court.

The Clean Air Act, widely considered the most complex environmental legislation in the United Sates, has not undergone any significant change since 1990. This Essay argues that the Clean Air Act’s ability to protect human health is limited by a failure to improve the Act to reflect modern scientific understandings. Even discounting those original parts of the Act essentially unchanged from the 1970s, the science that informed passage of the Act is twenty-three years old. During the interim, scientific understanding of air quality and pollution changed drastically, yet the Act remains unchanged. The 2007 discovery of highly-elevated wintertime ozone levels in a rural oil and gas field directly challenged what we “know” about ozone pollution. Before, science equated ozone pollution exclusively with high-temperature summer days in industrialized urban settings. The Clean Air Act, built around that science, still considers ozone exclusively from the urban point of view. However, EPA must now apply rules designed to fix smog problems in Los Angeles to rural areas which have nothing in common with urban settings. This disparity affects EPA’s ability to protect human health. It also leads to regulatory inefficiency and industry uncertainty. This Essay calls for a fresh look at the old rules, using the recent discovery of rural ozone as a primary example.

This paper examines rural ozone pollution in the Uinta Basin. The pollution issue is complex — scientific uncertainty compounds with jurisdictional issues under the Clean Air Act. A large number of conservation, government, and economic stakeholders take interest in the region’s air quality and there are no easy answers. This paper seeks to stimulate discussion in hopes of fostering a collaborative approach to solving the problem. It includes both a conflict assessment and proposes a process design for moving forward through cooperation.

The growing perception in the developed world that multi-national corporations conduct social and environmental exploitation abroad raises numerous questions about corporate social responsibility. That those corporations would not get away with, nor probably even attempt, such exploitation in their home countries complicates the dialogue: to what extent are the home governments responsible for ensuring their native corporations act responsibly abroad? The E.U. answers this question affirmatively and takes an active role in promoting social responsibility. One major mechanism they use is socially responsible public procurement, which incentivizes good social outcomes by awarding contracts based, in part, on social criteria. Because the annual public procurement budget in the E.U. hovers around €1 trillion, this offers an incredibly powerful tool for positive change. This Essay explores the E.U.’s framework for achieving these social goals and suggests that the U.S. should undertake many of the same policies. In the U.S., public procurement accounts for over 10% of GDP. Therefore, using the marketplace rather than regulation to achieve positive change offers a powerful tool: the upside of social good without the downside of increased regulatory burden.