Investments in new weather forecasting technologies and communication products can be costly and serve the ultimate purpose of protecting life and property. The Forecasting a Continuum of Environmental Threats (FACETs) paradigm attempts to improve technology and communication through the provision of probabilistic hazard information (PHI). The research and technology necessary to produce this information requires a substantial resource investment, but the societal value of the information may outweigh the costs. This study provides an initial estimate of this value by exploring public willingness to pay (WTP) for an app that provides continuously updated, geographically situated PHI that could be utilized during a tornado event. Findings indicate that the mean WTP, in a one-time payment, for this precise hazard information product is $7.53 per person. Aggregated to the US population, the estimated value is between $901 million and $1.56 billion. These findings indicate that federal agencies and private companies are likely to generate a substantial surplus by developing these products and will contribute to improving informed decision-making and protecting lives and property.

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The financial crisis in the USA is due to its great consequences still considered to be current topic. Its causes were discussed and analyzed by many researchers, but mostly from the financial point of view. This thesis takes different approach and identifies the role of the moral hazard in the pre-crisis period. Moral hazard is very often underestimated and for many people uninteresting factor. Therefor, the thesis is divided into four parts, which present the theoretical background of moral hazard and bring up the importance and constant presence of it in today's world. The main part of this work is last chapter, which analyzes moral hazard in the causes of the financial crisis. Moral hazard played key role in the pre-crisis period when it was present at all possible levels deforming the behavior of market players and causing the market failure. The deformation had mostly form of excessive risk-taking, unfavourable financial products and abuse of the information asymmetry. Very specific and dangerous kind of moral hazard is associated with the government interventions such as Greenspan doctrine or Too big to fail policy. It is because of its systematic character, when opposed to the moral hazard in the private sector is not required the presence of information asymmetry.