In 1987 the federal government permitted states to raise the speed limit on their rural interstate roads, but not on their urban interstate roads, from 55 mph to 65 mph for the first time in over a decade. Since the states that adopted the higher speed limit must have valued the travel hours...

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...

Due to Federal regulations, automobile air bag availability was a model-specific discontinuous function of model year for used vehicles in the 1990s and early 2000s. We use these discontinuities and the gradual increase in the supply of air bags to trace out the demand curve for air bags and the...

We present results for two contingent valuation surveys conducted in Hamilton, Canada and the US to elicit WTP for mortality risk reductions. We find similar Value of Statistical Life estimates across the two studies, ranging from USD 930,000 to USD 4.8 million (2000 US dollars). WTP increases...

This paper estimates the benefits and costs of state suppression policies to “bend the curve” during the initial outbreak of COVID-19 in the United States. We employ a value-of-production approach that values benefits and costs in terms of additions or subtractions to total production....

This paper estimates the benefits and costs of state suppression policies to “bend the curve” during the initial outbreak of COVID-19 in the United States. Relative to a baseline in which only the infected and at-risk populations mitigate the spread of coronavirus, we estimate that total...