Defense spending accounts for a large share of the budget in many countries, but the value of the resulting public good - national defense - has so far escaped assessment. Much of the literature has instead considered indirect benefits of defense spending in terms of greater economic growth or...

We estimate the demand value of road safety improvements in Switzerland from survey data using a novel elicitation approach. Individuals’ responses to questions about how much public spending on road safety should be increased are combined with observations of income, tax rate, and road usage...

This paper examines the role of simplified heuristics in the formation of preferences for public goods. Political scientists have suggested that voters use simplified heuristics based on the positions of familiar parties to infer how a proposed policy will affect them and to cast a vote in line...

Traditionally, economists make a sharp distinction between stated and revealed preferences, viewing the latter as more fully meeting the assumptions of economic analysis. Here, we consider one form of empirical evidence regarding this belief: the consistency of choices in stated and revealed...

I derive values of marginal changes in a public good for two-person households, measured alternatively by household member is̕ willingness to pay (WTP) for the good on behalf of the household, WTPi(H), or by the sum of individual WTP values across family members, WTP(C). Households are assumed...

The Value of a Statistical Life is a key input into the calculation of the benefits of environmental policies that save lives. To date, the VSL used in environmental policy analyses has not been adjusted for age or the cause of death. Air pollution regulations, however, are linked to reductions...

An important source of conflict surrounding nuclear energy is that with a very small probability, a large-scale nuclear accident may occur. One way to internalize the associated financial risks is through mandating nuclear operators to have liability insurance. This paper presents estimates of...