Since its inception, supporters of the Jones Act have claimed that the law is essential to U.S. national security. Although indefensible on economic grounds, Jones Act advocates argue that its restrictions promote the development of both a U.S. merchant marine and shipbuilding and repair...

Our research reviews theory and empirical evidence in the economics literature and provides a standard value of a statistical life (VSL) applicable to the Department of Defense (DOD). We follow Viscusi (2018a) by conducting a meta-analysis consisting of 1,025 VSL estimates from 68 different...

Im Kontext einer stark alternden Gesellschaft sowie hoher akkumulierter staatlicher Schuldenstände ist die Sorge um die Nachhaltigkeit der öffentlichen Finanzen nicht mehr aus der politischen und wissenschaftlichen Diskussion in den entwickelten Volkswirtschaften wegzudenken. Politische...

Our research uses data from multiple archival sources to examine substitution among armored (tank-intensive), infantry (troop-intensive), and airborne (also troop-intensive) military units, as well as mid-war reorganizations of each type, to estimate the marginal cost of reducing U.S. fatalities...

Our research uses data from multiple archival sources to examine substitution among armored (tank-intensive), infantry (troop-intensive), and airborne (also troop-intensive) military units, as well as mid-war reorganizations of each type, to estimate the marginal cost of reducing U.S. fatalities...

Although the attitude towards death was central to Stoic philosophy, economists studying the value of life paid little attention to Stoicism. The goal of this paper is to build an analytical bridge between Stoicism and the economic study of the value of life. We use writings of Epictetus, Seneca...

The anticipation of bad future events reduces currently experienced happiness and it may through this channel elicit detrimental behavioral responses. We explore this idea in the context of endogenous health and aging. We integrate physiological aging into a life-cycle model, calibrate it with...

We study medical progress within an economy of overlapping generations subject to endogenous mortality. Individuals demand health care with a view to lowering mortality over their life-cycle. We characterise the individual optimum and the general equilibrium of the economy and study the impact...

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...