Until the advent of behavioral and neuroeconomics, economics has generally tended to undervalue, on average, the importance of fear. Fear has traditionally been regarded as pertaining to an alternative domain with respect to rationality: it has thus been considered as triggering mechanism of anomalous, even irrational behavior. Conversely, the article speculates on the complexity of the concept of fear and of the social effects it is thought to produce. While discussing the eventual desirability of a freed-from-fear world and Western obsession (...) with risk management and safety from the economic problem and other pressures, the paper provides a general introduction to the relevance of the relatively unexplored issue of fear to economics as discipline as well as to applied economics in public policy. (shrink)