Risk regulation, liability and insurance as risk treatment mechanisms

Overview

Society uses multiple mechanisms to control the risk of hazardous activities:

• regulation: technological or organizational prescriptions
• liability regimes such as tort law: obligation to compensate victims
• soft law and self-regulation: voluntary standards of behaviour associated with social sanctions for firms that do not engage in the process
• insurance to ensure that victims are compensated for the monetary component of a loss

This slideset describes these different mechanisms and attempts to answer:

• what are the advantages and disadvantages of each mechanism?

• to what extent are they complementary?

This submodule is a part of the risk management module.

Course material

Risk regulation, liability and insurance as risk treatment mechanisms Lecture slides (PDF) View on SlideShare

Other resources

We recommend the following sources of further information on this topic:

• OECD report Risk and Regulatory Policy: Improving the Governance of Risk, 2010

• FonCSI report Risk regulation, liability and insurance: literature review of their influence on safety management, E. Marsden, 2014