Operations, Information and Decisions Papers

Document Type

Journal Article

Date of this Version

6-2007

Publication Source

Risk Analysis

Volume

27

Issue

3

Start Page

621

Last Page

634

DOI

10.1111/j.1539-6924.2007.00904.x

Abstract

In an interdependent world the risks faced by any one agent depend not only on its choices but also on those of all others. Expectations about others' choices will influence investments in risk management and the outcome can be suboptimal for everyone. We model this as the Nash equilibrium of a game and give conditions for such a suboptimal equilibrium to be tipped to an optimal one. We also characterize the smallest coalition to tip an equilibrium, the minimum critical coalition, and show that this is also the cheapest critical coalition, so that there is no less expensive way to move the system from the suboptimal to the optimal equilibrium. We illustrate these results by reference to airline security and the control of infectious diseases via vaccination.

Copyright/Permission Statement

This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Heal, G., & Kunreuther, H. (2007). Modeling interdependent risks. Risk Analysis, 27(3), 621-634., which has been published in final form at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1539-6924.2007.00904.x/abstract. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Self-Archiving [link to http://olabout.wiley.com/WileyCDA/Section/id-820227.html#terms].

Keywords

Cascading, critical coalition, interdependence, Nash equilibrium, security, terrorism, tipping

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Date Posted: 27 November 2017

This document has been peer reviewed.