The Value of a Statistical Life is a key input into the calculation of the benefits of environmental policies that save lives. To date, the VSL used in environmental policy analyses has not been adjusted for age or the cause of death. Air pollution regulations, however, are linked to reductions...

A ubiquitous and largely unquestioned assumption in studies of housing markets is that there is perfect information about local amenities. This paper measures the housing market and health impacts of 1,600 openings and closings of industrial plants that emit toxic pollutants. We find that...

We examine how absences respond to particle pollution in a multi-year individual panel comprising 6,500 children enrolled at international schools situated in a major economic hub in north China. These schools (and their parents) have been willing and able to respond to the dire state of air...

This paper studies whether people's perception of improvements in local air quality are reflected in the housing market based on comprehensive data on real estate prices from Germany. Using a quasi-experimental research design, we exploit the staggered introduction of Low Emission Zones (LEZs)...

This paper examines factors that may influence the estimates of the Value of a Statistical Life obtained from contingent valuation surveys that elicit the willingness to pay (WTP) for mortality risk reductions. We examine the importance of distributional assumptions, the choice of the welfare...

Using the extended Ramsey rule, the socially efficient rate is the difference between a wealth effect and a precautionary effect of economic growth. This second effect is increasing in the degree of uncertainty affecting the future. In the literature, it is usually calibrated by estimating the...

Existing studies that evaluate the impact of pollution on human beings understate its negative effect on cognition, mental health, and happiness. This paper attempts to fill in the gap via investigating the impact of air quality on subjective well-being using China as an example. By matching a...

Within the last decades an increasing number of people practice risky sports in their leisure time. Although there exists a vast number of economic literature on risk-taking behavior, an estimation of the individual willingness to pay (WTP) for the option to exercise risk-taking is missing....