The considerable literature on the value of a statistical life (VSL) documents the wage-mortality risk tradeoffs for the working population. Regulatory analyses often must monetize risks to populations at the tails of the age distribution. Because of the longer life expectancy for children,...

The most enduring measure of how individuals make personal decisions affecting their health and safety is the compensating wage differential for job safety risk revealed in the labor market via hedonic equilibrium outcomes. The decisions in turn reveal the value of a statistical life (VSL), the...

Catastrophic risks differ in terms of their natural or human origins, their possible amplification by human behaviors, and the relationships between those who create the risks and those who suffer the losses. Given their disparate anatomies, catastrophic risks generally require tailored...

This paper reports the stated preference values for reducing the morbidity risks from drinking water estimated using a nationally representative U.S. sample of 3,585 households. Based on the average annual gastrointestinal (GI) illness risk in the U.S. from drinking water of about 5 illnesses...

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has been the target of two recent controversies involving the devaluation of life - the 2003 use of a senior discount for the value of statistical life for those over age 65 and the 2008 downward reassessment of the value of statistical life by the...

This article estimates whether there is a cancer risk premium for the value of a statistical life (VSL) using stated preference valuations of cancer risks for a large, nationally representative U.S. sample. The present value of an expected cancer case that occurs after a one decade latency...

The mad cow disease crisis in the United Kingdom (U.K.) was a major policy disaster. The government and public health officials failed to identify the risk to humans, created tremendous uncertainty regarding the human risks once they were identified, and undertook a series of policies that...

Behavioral economists have identified certain biases in decision-making that lead people to make decisions that harm themselves, but there is insufficient guidance for estimating benefits in the presence of such behavioral failures. This gap in principles and standards for benefit-cost analysis...

Examination of estimates of the income elasticity of the value of a statistical life based on international stated preference studies yields an average between 0.94 and 1.05 overall and 0.65 and 0.80 after controlling for covariates. Quantile regression estimates indicate that the income...

The most enduring measure of how individuals make personal decisions affecting their health and safety is the compensating wage differential for job safety risk revealed in the labor market via hedonic equilibrium outcomes. The decisions in turn reveal the value of a statistical life (VSL), the...