Injuries are one of the most serious public health problems facing the United States today. Through premature death, disability, medical cost and lost productivity, injuries impact the health and welfare of all Americans. Deaths only begin to tell the story. Although many injuries are minor, a...

Total cost estimates for crime in the United States are both out-of-date and incomplete.We estimated incidence and costs of personal crimes (both violent and non-violent) and propertycrimes in 2017. Incidence came from national arrest data, multi-state estimates of police-reportedcrimes per...

This paper presents a detailed study of jury awards for compensatory damages to victims of crime. Such awards typically result when victims sue third parties who are responsible for some form of negligence such as inadequate security or alcohol over-service. We obtained nationwide data on jury...

Quality-adjusted life years (QALYs) measure utility lost to nonfatal health problems. Economists using existing, empirically validated QALY scales in unmonetized or monetized form can help guide jury valuations of suffering and quality of life loss, increase award predictability, and thus...

Policy decisions can be informed by information on anticipated costs and expected future benefits of courses of action. The key questions in economic evaluation of a public health law are whether its benefits, as measured by health outcomes or cost savings, exceed its costs; secondarily, there...

This article examines the effect of workers' compensation fee schedules and state hospital rate-setting upon workers' compensation payments. We examine four types of injuries and payments involving hospitalization and nonhospitalized claims. The sample contains about 217,000 randomly-selected...