In developing countries, urban clusters of manufacturers which are "informal"—small-scale, unlicensed and virtually unregulated—can have severe environmental impacts. Yet pollution control efforts have traditionally focused on large industrial sources, in part because the problem is not...

We believe a lack of transparency undermines both the credibility of, and interest in, stated choice studies among policy makers. Unlike articles reporting the results of contingent valuation studies, papers in the stated choice literature rarely present simple tabulations of raw response data...

Although it is well known that vaccines against many infectious diseases confer positive economic externalities via indirect protection, analysts have typically ignored possible herd protection effects in policy analyses of vaccination programs. Despite a growing literature on the economic...

Drug innovation relies on cumulative, path-dependent, incremental research and development (R&D). In oncology, path-dependence may not be along a single dimension, such as steadily improving efficacy or survival against a given endpoint in the same population, but innovation builds on itself....

Time use researchers working in least developed countries (LDCs) face difficulties collecting data from illiterate populations who may conceptualize time differently than those in industrialized countries. We identify existing gaps in time use data collection methods and discuss two novel,...

This article discusses the evolving field of pharmacogenomics, which is the science of using genomic markers to predict drug response, and how it may impact the future costs, risks and returns to pharmaceutical research and development (R&D). We uncover a number of factors and issues that are...

We examine risk preferences in an urban setting in a low-income developing country with nonstudent subjects by adapting the experimental approach of Holt and Laury (HL; 2002). We conducted 22 group experiments with 404 participants and used in-kind payoffs. The average respondent was...

We present the results of two contingent valuation surveys conducted in Hamilton, Canada and nation-wide in the US to elicit WTP for reductions in one's risk of death. We find that the Values of a Statistical Life implied by WTP are very similar across the two studies, and range from $930,000 to...

We present results for two contingent valuation surveys conducted in Hamilton, Canada and the US to elicit WTP for mortality risk reductions. We find similar Value of Statistical Life estimates across the two studies, ranging from USD 930,000 to USD 4.8 million (2000 US dollars). WTP increases...