Selection of the best estimates of economic parameters frequently relies on the best estimate or a meta-analysis of the “best-set” of parameter estimates from the literature. Using an all-set dataset consisting of all reported estimates of the value of a statistical life (VSL) as well as a...

This Article evaluates judicial review of agency benefit-cost analysis ("BCA") by examining a substantial sample of thirty-eight judicial decisions on agency actions that implicate BCA. Essentially, the Administrative Procedure Act tasks federal courts with ensuring that federal agency action is...

Countries throughout the world use estimates of the value of a statistical life (VSL) to monetize fatality risks in benefit-cost analyses. However, the vast majority of countries lack reliable revealed preference or stated preference estimates of the VSL. This article proposes that the best way...

Governments often require that products carry warnings to inform people about risks. The warnings approach, as opposed to the command and control approach to risk regulation, functions as a decentralized regulatory mechanism that empowers individuals to make decisions that take into account...

This paper updates the cost-per-life-saved cutoff, which is a cost-effectiveness threshold for life- saving regulations, whereby regulations costing more per life saved than this threshold level are expected to increase mortality risk on net. Two competing methods of deriving the cutoff exist: a...

Resource allocations of all kinds inevitably encounter financial constraints, making it infeasible to make financially unbounded commitments. Such resource constraints arise in almost all health and safety risk contexts, which has led to a regulatory oversight process to ascertain whether the...

This paper provides a systematic review of the economic analysis of health, safety, and environmental regulations. Although the market failures that give rise to a rationale for intervention are well known, not all market failures imply that market risk levels are too great. Hazard warnings...

This chapter provides an overview of the current methodology for assessing environmental health risks. Our primary focus is on the practices that U.S. regulatory agencies use for assessing cancer risk, although we also provide a brief comparison to the methodology used in Western Europe. We then...

This paper examines the relationship between risk attitudes and individual rates of time preference. We find that heterogeneous risk preferences and their allied behaviors are correlated with differences in individual discount rates. To illustrate our theory we examine the rates of time...

This article provides a response to the opponents of monetization of risk and environmental benefits, such as the authors of "Priceless: On Knowing the Price of Everything and the Value of Nothing." Putting benefit values in dollar terms ensures that there will be full recognition of these...