We estimate the value of a statistical life (VSL), or the willingness to trade-off wealth and mortality risk, among 430,000 U.S. Army soldiers choosing whether to reenlist from 2002-2010. Using a discrete choice random utility approach and significant variation in retention bonuses and mortality...

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...

This study uses For Official Use Only data on U.S. military operations to evaluate the large-scale Army policies to replace relatively light Type 1 Tactical Wheeled Vehicles (TWVs) with more heavily protected Type 2 variants and later to replace Type 2s with more heavily protected Type 3s. We...

We assess the impact of fully paid maternity leave on maternal health in the year after birth. We exploit a sudden expansion of paid leave from 6 to 12 weeks in the United States Army and Air Force to estimate impacts under regression discontinuity and difference in differences frameworks....

There is significant interest in understanding the labor market consequences of the opioid epidemic, but little is known about how opioid use impacts on-the-job productivity. We analyze the impact of opioid initiation in the emergency department (ED) on workforce outcomes in the Military using...

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 examines the effect of combat deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan on casualties. We use restricted data from the Defense Manpower Data Center (DMDC) and Social Security Administration (SSA) to construct a panel of all U.S. Active Duty service members having served at some point...