| Abstract: | At multiparty hazardous waste sites, it is often advantageous to all parties when one or more of the parties settle their liabilities before the remediation is completed, often called a “cash out.” Commonly used methods for developing settlement values may, however, create substantial differences between the costs that would have been allocated to the various parties if they stayed in the process until final costs were known and the actual payments made in a cash-out settlement. Evaluation of the cost uncertainty structure can illuminate this issue and suggest alternative settlement structures that may reduce the disparities and provide improved bases for cash out settlements. |
