Area C: Ap­pli­ca­tions

Con­se­quences of Un­cer­tainty for Pol­icy and Wel­fare

The im­pli­ca­tions of ac­knowl­edg­ing Knight­ian un­cer­tainty in pol­icy ad­vice and gov­er­nance are ob­vi­ously sub­stan­tial. Start­ing with the ob­ser­va­tion that Knight­ian un­cer­tainty is usu­ally taken to imply that de­ci­sion mak­ers de­vi­ate from sub­jec­tive ex­pected util­ity, let alone ex­pected util­ity, the de­ci­sion pat­terns of all agents may change dras­ti­cally, im­ply­ing that all pol­icy ad­vice and gov­er­nance de­ci­sions need to be adapted when Knight­ian dy­nam­ics are rec­og­nized. Within the RTG, we in­tend to study the im­pli­ca­tions of Knight­ian dy­nam­ics for pol­icy ad­vice and gov­er­nance with re­spect to five cur­rently hotly de­bated top­ics: epi­demics (C1), trust in eco­nomic pol­icy (C2), ca­pac­ity ad­just­ment (C3), pol­lu­tion (C4), and in­sur­ance (C5).