Sensitivity (proportionality) of willingness to pay to (small) risk changes is often used as a criterion to test for valid measures of economic preferences. In a contingent valuation (CV) study conducted in Austria, 1,005 respondents were asked their willingness to pay (WTP) for preventing an...

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...

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...

Sensitivity (proportionality) of willingness to pay to (small) risk changes is often used as a criterion to test for valid measures of economic preferences. In a contingent valuation (CV) study conducted in Austria in February 2005 1,005 respondents were asked their willingness to pay (WTP) for...

The fatality risk-money tradeoff that is the value of a statistical life (VSL) may vary with the nature of the fatality event. While all fatalities involve loss of future life expectancy, the morbidity effects and their duration may differ. This article analyzes fatality risks accompanied by...

Compensating wages for workplace fatality and accident risks are used to infer the value of a statistical life (VSL), which in turn is used to assess the benefits of human health and safety regulations. The estimation of these wage differentials, however, has been plagued by measurement error...

We use a panel dataset of UK workers to look for evidence of compensating wage differentials for workplace risk. Risk data are available at the four-digit industry level or at the three-digit occupation level. We discuss various econometric problems associated with the hedonic wage approach,...

We use data from a survey of residents of five Italian cities conducted in late Spring 2004 to estimate the discount rates implicit in (a) money v. future risk reductions and (b) money v. money tradeoffs. We find that the mean personal discount rate is 2% in (a) and 8.7% in (b). The latter is...

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...

Economic research has developed estimates of the heterogeneity of the value of statistical life (VSL) on dimensions such as individual age, income, immigrant status, and the nature of the risk exposure. This paper examines the empirical evidence on the heterogeneity of VSL and explores the...