Abstract
New technologies can bring tremendous benefits. But they also have costs, or risks, some known, some unknown. How should authorities regulate new technologies in the light of the possible costs and benefits? A standard approach to decision making under risk is to use formal risk cost-benefit analysis. Yet there are clear limits to this approach where risks and probabilities are unknown. Furthermore, simple cost-benefit analysis ignores questions of moral hazard—where benefits and costs fall—and the political dimensions of the introduction of new technologies. In this paper, I discuss how to frame a reasonable precautionary attitude to the risks of new technology, setting out a series of questions that need to be taken into account before a technology should be approved.
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Notes
- 1.
I owe this point to John O’Neill.
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Acknowledgments
My thanks to audiences in Kobe, Oxford and Reading for their very helpful comments, and to Tom Simpson, Karthik Ramanna, and Henry Shue for discussing the themes of the paper. I owe a special thanks to Hélène Hermansson and Sven Ove Hanson for giving me the opportunity to respond to Hélène’s Ph.D. thesis, which contained their joint work and set me on the path explored here.
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Wolff, J. (2021). Risk and the Regulation of New Technologies. In: Matsuda, T., Wolff, J., Yanagawa, T. (eds) Risks and Regulation of New Technologies. Kobe University Monograph Series in Social Science Research. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-8689-7_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-8689-7_1
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