Howard Kunreuther

Howard C. Kunreuther is the James G. Dinan Professor; Professor of Decision Sciences and Business and Public Policy at the Wharton School, and co-director of the Wharton Risk Management and Decision Processes Center. He has a long-standing interest in ways that society can better manage low-probability, high-consequence events related to technological and natural hazards.

Professor Kunreuther is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a Distinguished Fellow of the Society for Risk Analysis, receiving the Society’s Distinguished Achievement Award in 2001. He recently served on the National Academy of Science / National Research Council’s panel on Increasing National Resilience to Hazards and Disasters, and on the New York City Panel on Climate Change as part of the Special Initiative for Rebuilding and Resiliency report released by the New York City Mayor's Office in June 2013. He is a Coordinating Lead Author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)’s 5th Assessment Report, Working Group 3, Chapter 2, “Integrated Risk and Uncertainty Assessment of Climate Change Response Policies.”

Dr. Kunreuther served as a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Insurance and Asset Management for 2011-2012, and in 2009-2010 was co-chair of the Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Leadership and Innovation for Reducing Risks from Natural Disasters. His recent books include At War with the Weather (with Erwann Michel-Kerjan) (MIT Press, 2009, paperback, 2011), winner of the Kulp-Wright Book Award from the American Risk and Insurance Association in 2011; Learning from Catastrophes: Strategies for Reaction and Response (with Michael Useem) (Financial Times Press, 2010); Insurance and Behavioral Economics: Improving Decisions in the Most Misunderstood Industry (with Mark Pauly and Stacey McMorrow) (Cambridge University Press, 2013); and Leadership Dispatches: Chile's Extraordinary Comeback from Disaster (with Michael Useem and Erwann Michel-Kerjan) (Stanford University Press, 2015).