IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/usi/wpaper/823.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Covid-19/SARS CoV-2 pandemic outbreak and the risk of institutional failures

Author

Listed:
  • Marcello Basili
  • Antonio Nicita

Abstract

The new coronavirus CoVid-19 (SARS Cov-2) pandemic outbreak all around theWorld puts in evidence how institutional failures may end up in a catastrophic event. The precautionary principle (PP) has been proposed as the proper guide for the decision-making criteria to be adopted in the face of the new catastrophic risks that have arisen in the decades of this century. Unfortunately the political institutions at the national and supranational level, such as the European Union Commission, seem having neglected it opening the scenario of a lethal global pandemic that could cause millions of deaths, principally elderlies with chronic diseases, based on early evidence in China and Italy. According to scientists and health authorities human beings are facing the high probable nightmare of a very aggressive and mortal pandemy, worst than the Spanish flu (1918-1919) the most famous reconbined avian flu killed millions, without targeted therapeutics for treatment and vaccines.

Suggested Citation

  • Marcello Basili & Antonio Nicita, 2020. "The Covid-19/SARS CoV-2 pandemic outbreak and the risk of institutional failures," Department of Economics University of Siena 823, Department of Economics, University of Siena.
    • Handle: RePEc:usi:wpaper:823
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://repec.deps.unisi.it/quaderni/823.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. 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.
    2. Grant, Simon & Quiggin, John, 2013. "Bounded awareness, heuristics and the Precautionary Principle," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 93(C), pages 17-31.
    3. Fan, Victoria Y & Jamison, Dean T & Summers, Lawrence H, 2018. "Pandemic risk: how large are the expected losses?," Scholarly Articles 35014363, Harvard Kennedy School of Government.
    4. Marcello Basili & Alain Chateauneuf, 2011. "Extreme events and entropy: A multiple quantile utility model," Post-Print hal-00685405, HAL.
    5. 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.
    6. 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.
    7. Marcello Basili, 2006. "A Rational Decision Rule with Extreme Events," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 26(6), pages 1721-1728, December.
    8. Gilboa, Itzhak & Schmeidler, David, 1989. "Maxmin expected utility with non-unique prior," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(2), pages 141-153, April.
    9. Editorial, 2020. "Covid-19 and Climate Change," Journal, Review of Agrarian Studies, vol. 10(1), pages 5-6, January-J.
    10. Marcello Basili & Maurizio Franzini, 2006. "Understanding the Risk of an Avian Flu Pandemic: Rational Waiting or Precautionary Failure?," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 26(3), pages 617-630, June.
    11. Chichilnisky, Graciela, 2009. "The topology of fear," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 45(12), pages 807-816, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Meglena Jeleva & Stéphane Rossignol, 2019. "Optimists, Pessimists, and the Precautionary Principle," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 74(1), pages 367-396, September.
    2. Helena Gaspars-Wieloch, 2015. "On a decision rule supported by a forecasting stage based on the decision maker’s coefficient of optimism," Central European Journal of Operations Research, Springer;Slovak Society for Operations Research;Hungarian Operational Research Society;Czech Society for Operations Research;Österr. Gesellschaft für Operations Research (ÖGOR);Slovenian Society Informatika - Section for Operational Research;Croatian Operational Research Society, vol. 23(3), pages 579-594, September.
    3. 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.
    4. Helena Gaspars-Wieloch, 2017. "Newsvendor problem under complete uncertainty: a case of innovative products," Central European Journal of Operations Research, Springer;Slovak Society for Operations Research;Hungarian Operational Research Society;Czech Society for Operations Research;Österr. Gesellschaft für Operations Research (ÖGOR);Slovenian Society Informatika - Section for Operational Research;Croatian Operational Research Society, vol. 25(3), pages 561-585, September.
    5. Helena Gaspars-Wieloch, 2019. "Project Net Present Value estimation under uncertainty," Central European Journal of Operations Research, Springer;Slovak Society for Operations Research;Hungarian Operational Research Society;Czech Society for Operations Research;Österr. Gesellschaft für Operations Research (ÖGOR);Slovenian Society Informatika - Section for Operational Research;Croatian Operational Research Society, vol. 27(1), pages 179-197, March.
    6. Marcello Basili, 2006. "A Rational Decision Rule with Extreme Events," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 26(6), pages 1721-1728, December.
    7. Marcello Basili, 2008. "The global strategy to cope with H5N1: the property rights caveat," Department of Economic Policy, Finance and Development (DEPFID) University of Siena 0908, Department of Economic Policy, Finance and Development (DEPFID), University of Siena.
    8. Alon, Shiri, 2015. "Worst-case expected utility," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(C), pages 43-48.
    9. Helena Gaspars-Wieloch, 2018. "The Impact of the Structure of the Payoff Matrix on the Final Decision made Under Uncertainty," Asia-Pacific Journal of Operational Research (APJOR), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 35(01), pages 1-27, February.
    10. Heyen, Daniel & Goeschl, Timo & Wiesenfarth , Boris, 2015. "Risk Assessment under Ambiguity: Precautionary Learning vs. Research Pessimism," Working Papers 0605, University of Heidelberg, Department of Economics.
    11. Marcello Basili, 2013. "Ellsberg Rules and Keynes’s State of Long-Term Expectation: More Than an Accordance," Department of Economics University of Siena 685, Department of Economics, University of Siena.
    12. Joaquín Gómez Miñambres & Mark Schneider, 2019. "Carrots and Sticks: Optimal Contracting with Skewness Preference and Ambiguity Aversion," Working Papers 19-02, Chapman University, Economic Science Institute.
    13. Enrico Diecidue & Peter Wakker & Marcel Zeelenberg, 2007. "Eliciting decision weights by adapting de Finetti’s betting-odds method to prospect theory," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 34(3), pages 179-199, June.
    14. 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.
    15. Olivier Chanel & Graciela Chichilnisky, 2009. "The influence of fear in decisions: Experimental evidence," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 39(3), pages 271-298, December.
    16. Péter Bayer & Ani Guerdjikova, 2020. "Optimism leads to optimality: Ambiguity in network formation," Working Papers hal-03005107, HAL.
    17. Heyen, Daniel, 2018. "Ambiguity aversion under maximum-likelihood updating," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 80342, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    18. Amit Kothiyal & Vitalie Spinu & Peter Wakker, 2014. "An experimental test of prospect theory for predicting choice under ambiguity," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 48(1), pages 1-17, February.
    19. Craig Webb, 2010. "Agreeing to spin the subjective roulette wheel: Bargaining with subjective mixtures," Economics Discussion Paper Series 1005, Economics, The University of Manchester.
    20. Frick, Mira & Iijima, Ryota & Le Yaouanq, Yves, 2022. "Objective rationality foundations for (dynamic) α-MEU," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 200(C).

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D81 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Criteria for Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:usi:wpaper:823. 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: Fabrizio Becatti (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/desieit.html .

    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.