The value of mortality risk reduction is an important component of the benefits of environmental policies. In recent years, the number, scope, and quality of valuation studies have increased dramatically. Revealed-preference studies of wage compensation for occupational risks, on which analysts...

Decisions on investing in health as well as other policies require deciding how to best allocate available resources - recognizing that using labor, materials, and other resources for one purpose means that they cannot be used for other purposes. Approaches for economic evaluation, including...

The effect of new health information on individuals' expectations about their longevity is examined using a Bayesian learning model. Using two-period panel-structured survey data from Taiwan, we find that subjective probabilities of living to age 75 and 85 are significantly smaller for...

By reducing risk of large out-of-pocket medical expenses, comprehensive social health insurance may reduce households' motivation to engage in precautionary behaviors such as saving, procurement of private insurance, and spousal labor-force participation. We use the natural experiment provided...

Economic evaluation of projects involving changes in mortality risk conventionally assumes that lives are statistical, i.e., that risks and policy-induced changes in risk are small and similar among a population. In reality, baseline mortality risks and policy-induced changes in risk often...

We evaluate the effects of disease type and latency on willingness to pay (WTP) to reduce environmental risks of chronic, degenerative disease. Using contingent-valuation data collected from approximately 1,200 respondents in Taiwan, we find that WTP declines with latency between exposure to...

Two surveys conducted in Taiwan during the spring 2003 SARS epidemic reveal a high degree of concern about the threat posed by SARS to Taiwan and to residents, although respondents believe they are knowledgeable about the risk of SARS and that it is susceptible to individual control. WTP to...

By reducing risk of large out-of-pocket medical expenses, comprehensive social health insurance may reduce households' motivation to engage in precautionary behaviors such as saving, procurement of private insurance, and spousal labor-force participation. We use the natural experiment provided...

The relationship between willingness to pay (WTP) to reduce the probability of an adverse event and the degree of risk aversion is ambiguous. The ambiguity arises because paying for protection worsens the outcome in the event the adverse event occurs, which influences the expected marginal...