Averting Catastrophe

Best-selling author Cass R. Sunstein examines how to avoid worst-case scenarios

The world is increasingly confronted with new challenges related to climate change, globalization, disease, and technology. Governments are faced with having to decide how much risk is worth taking, how much destruction and death can be tolerated, and how much money should be invested in the hopes of avoiding catastrophe. Lacking full information, should decision-makers focus on avoiding the most catastrophic outcomes? When should extreme measures be taken to prevent as much destruction as possible?

Averting Catastrophe explores how governments ought to make decisions in times of imminent disaster. Cass R. Sunstein argues that using the “maximin rule,” which calls for choosing the approach that eliminates the worst of the worst-case scenarios, may be necessary when public officials lack important information, and when the worst-case scenario is too disastrous to contemplate. He underscores this argument by emphasizing the reality of “Knightian uncertainty,” found in circumstances in which it is not possible to assign probabilities to various outcomes. Sunstein brings foundational issues in decision theory in close contact with real problems in regulation, law, and daily life, and considers other potential future risks. At once an approachable introduction to decision-theory and a provocative argument for how governments ought to handle risk, Averting Catastrophe offers a definitive path forward in a world rife with uncertainty.

Cass Sunstein is Robert Walmsley University Professor of law and ​​founder and director of the Program on Behavioral Economics and Public Policy at Harvard Law School. He is author of numerous books, including #Republic: Divided Democracy in the Age of Social Media (Princeton University Press, 2018); Law and Leviathan: Redeeming the Administrative State (Harvard University Press, 2020); and Impeachment: A Citizen's Guide (Penguin Books, 2019).Cass R. Sunstein is the Robert Walmsley University Professor at Harvard. He is the founder and director of the Program on Behavioral Economics and Public Policy at Harvard Law School. He is the author of hundreds of articles and dozens of books, including Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness (with Richard H. Thaler), Conformity: The Power of Social Influences, How Change Happens, and Too Much Information: Understanding What You Don’t Want to Know.

Richard L. Revesz, Bryce Professor of Law and Dean Emeritus, New York University School of Law:
A must-read if you want the expert guidance of one of the most brilliant minds in American law about how our nation should address its most serious risks, including pandemics, climate change, and terrorist attacks. Cass Sunstein has written a tour-de-force that makes the most vexing problems in decision theory accessible—and enjoyable to read—to a broad audience.

Arden Rowell, co-author, The Psychology of Environmental Law:
This is an important book of extraordinary timeliness. At once modest and transformative, Sunstein’s pragmatic recommendations can help policymakers manage the world’s biggest problems—even in the face of catastrophic uncertainty.

Robert S. Pindyck, Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi Professor in Economics and Finance, Massachusetts Institute of Technology:
A must-read book for anyone with an interest in public policy or personal decision-making in the face of uncertainty. Which makes it a must-read book, period.

William Nordhaus, Nobel laureate in Economics:
If you want to understand how to analyze and avert potential catastrophes of the modern world, from pandemics to climate change, you should start with this brilliant book. Ranging widely and deeply over law, economics, and philosophy, Sunstein explains through examples and principles how societies can deal with the deep uncertainties we face.

Michael Greenstone, Milton Friedman Distinguished Service Professor of Economics, University of Chicago:
Sunstein is unique in knowing about both the nature of risk and uncertainty and having crafted policy to protect us from it. This book tells us what we can do to 'sleep better at night' in an uncertain world. This is wisdom that should be acted on.