This article develops the first measures of age-industry job risks to examine the age variations in the value of statistical life. Because of the greater risk vulnerability of older workers, they face flatter wage-risk gradients than younger workers, which we show to be the case empirically....

A prominent theoretical controversy in the compensating differentials literature concerns unobservable individual productivity. Competing models yield opposite predictions depending on whether the unobservable productivity is safety-related skill or productivity generally. Using five panel waves...

The economic approach to valuing risks to life focuses on risk-money tradeoffs for very small risks of death, or the value of statistical life (VSL). These VSL levels will generally exceed the optimal insurance amounts. A substantial literature has estimated the wage-fatality risk tradeoffs,...

This article examines age variations in support for climate change policies in a sample of over 14,000 respondents to a 1999 Eurobarometer survey. There is a steady decline with age in whether respondents are willing to incur higher gasoline taxes to protect the environment and in the amount of...

Global climate change is of official concern at the national level throughout Europe and is mirrored in individual data. Examination of 1999 Eurobarometer survey data with respondents from 15 European countries indicates that respondents who are very worried about global warming risks are...

This paper examines the influence on estimates of the value of statistical life (VSL) of the worker's relative position in the wage distribution and relative position in the life cycle. Whereas past work on relative position effects in the labor market have been based on illustrative...

Four years ago, Magat, Huber, Viscusi, and Bell (2000) reported pretest results that introduced an iterative choice approach to valuing water quality improvements. This paper applies this approach to a nationally representative sample of over 1,000 respondents. We find that the method provides...

This article examines the rationality of seatbelt usage using an original data set of 465 adult respondents. People with high stated values of statistical life, who do not smoke, and who have risk beliefs that are highly elastic with respect to actual risks are more likely to use seatbelts, as...

Our research examines empirically the age pattern of the implicit value of life revealed from workers' differential wages and job safety pairings. Although aging reduces the number of years of life expectancy, aging can affect the value of life through an effect on planned life-cycle...

This paper provides an analysis of 64 punitive damages awards of at least $100 million. Based on an inventory of these cases, there is evidence that these blockbuster awards are highly concentrated geographically, as two states account for 27 of the 64 awards. The awards also have been rising...