Our research addresses fundamental long-standing concerns in the compensating wage differentials literature and its public policy implications: the econometric properties of estimates of the value of statistical life (VSL) and the wide range of such estimates from about $0.5 million to about $21...

We measure the impact of individuals' looks on their life satisfaction or happiness. Using five data sets from the U.S., Canada, the U.K., and Germany, we construct beauty measures in different ways that allow putting a lower bound on the true effects of beauty on happiness. Personal beauty...

Americans aged sixty or older stand to lose 153 to 222 days of life expectancy from contracting COVID-19. Over 90 percent of the U.S. population was under stay at home orders by April 2020. These social distancing measures to slow the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 or novel coronavirus have led to...

Based on the aggregation of individual willingness-to-pay for a statistical life, we calibrate an intertemporal optimization model to determine the aggregate welfare losses from HIV/AIDS in 25 Eastern European countries. Assuming a discount rate of three percent, we find a total welfare loss for...