On the Separation of Risk Assessment and Risk Management

This paper provides a framework for analysing the standard policy of separating risk assessment from risk management. It presents an explicit, but stylized, model of the federal risk management system. In the model, a consumer faces a risky situation but is not the risk management decision maker. Political pressures on the actual decision maker lead to risk management errors. Separating risk assessment from risk management does not necessarily reduce the influence of political pressures. The paper concludes, however, that a strict separation may improve the risk management system from the point of view of the consumer.